


The Coffee Bandits of Greater Manhattan

by daroos



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Bro - Freeform, Clint Needs a Hug, Clint No, Dating, F/M, Food Porn, Friendship, M/M, Making Out, New York, New love, Romance, Schmoop, Team as Family, This fic will make you hungry, family by choice, fluffy fight club, tracksuit mafia - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daroos/pseuds/daroos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Coffee Shop AU with a twist.  Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff were thrown together by fate but now run one of the most successful food trucks in the five boroughs.  This is a story of how they came to be, how romance can bloom in strange places, and how the bonds of family aren’t always constricting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A travel-flat of four labeled coffees with the change tucked where creamer would normally go popped out the service window. An unmarked white sedan that screamed ‘works for the city’ pulled around the corner, heading down the street in the opposite direction to that which their truck was parked with a sinister sort of intent.

“Thanks for the business! See you next time!” Clint called out the window, shutting it before he could get a reply. The sedan nipped into a tight parking space and the driver leapt out. The little flashing lights on the top of the truck started going, and Clint slammed home the last few items in their locking compartments, securing the truck for transit. With a roar the engine revved up, swerved into traffic narrowly missing a collision with a panel truck, jumped the curb of a construction site and zoomed down a narrow one-way street. The Coffee Bandits had struck again.

“That was close, Tash,” Clint called to the front, strapping himself to a narrow seat that doubled as a spent grounds container.

Natasha made a rude noise, accelerating around a bicyclist and dodging someone trying to park. “He wasn’t even close enough to smell our exhaust.”

“I don’t know. If we get caught I don’t think we’ll get off with a fine.”

“How long have we been doing this? If they haven’t caught us now they’re not going to. The city has bigger fish to fry than a rogue coffee truck.” Natasha broke off from their conversation to curse inventively at a double-long bus. Clint glanced behind them, anxiously looking for a white sedan with city plates.

They had been at it for eight months, through the smothering heat of summer and the deep snows of winter. It was their first spring, each day dawning with more promise and beauty than the last, and Clint was excited to roll out their mixed hot/cold menu for the thirsting crowds. They had been so busy (and so successful) that the little matter of a food truck permit and food safety inspections had never been given their proper weight. They hadn’t been in operation three months, zipping around the city and dispensing caffeine to the ravening masses, when an unassuming man in a suit had sidled up to them in the financial district asking about their letter grade.

Clint had gotten out of the truck to talk with the stuffed suit while Natasha surreptitiously closed up shop. In a coordinated move which couldn’t have been better if they’d practiced, Natasha backed down Stone Street three blocks going the wrong direction at almost forty and zipped out of sight while Clint had made a break for it through a fake Irish pub and into the mid-day crowds of tourists around Wall Street. Since then they had been wanted by the city food inspectors - caffeinated fugitives from the law.

\--

Clint didn’t let the last bit of tension leave him until they were safely in their home bay in the bottom floor of a warehouse. The rest of the floor was taken up by machinery, manufacturing lines which ran at odd hours, and a small collection of very expensive cars lovingly stacked and covered. Natasha told him that there was a helicopter deeper in the bowels of the building that she was relatively certain was functional. Their tiny bay space was part of the reason they never even considered getting a food services permit. It looked more like a mechanic’s shop than a place people would expect to eat food from.

Clint and Natasha moved through their cleanup routine; emptying spent grounds, disinfecting the sink and counters, replenishing cups and lids, and freezing leftover coffee into coffee ice cubes. Natasha pulled out a sack of beans and put them in the roaster for the next week Clint cleaned out their faithful Clover coffee maker and the espresso machine before dumping the spent milk. It was comfortable. They moved through their tiny space with the efficiency of long association.

“I was thinking of elephant ears for tomorrow,” Natasha told him. “There’s a cloud brewing in Alphabet City and they always sell well there.”

Clint hooked his chin over her shoulder so as to read the tablet she was contemplating. A map of Manhattan was displayed with a weather-map overlaid on it.

Tony had developed an algorithm that aggregated data from social media sites along with weather patterns, transit schedules, school schedules, traffic, and historical patterns to predict locations of great coffee need. They got alerts during particularly acute ‘flash floods’ of need, but otherwise simply picked areas where it looked like sales would be good. In return for this software (and second-to-none equipment maintenance and upgrades), they were beholden to Stark’s coffee call. If he sent out an SOS they would be at his doorstep with a carafe within twenty minutes.

“I like elephant ears,” Clint said finally. He didn’t like working Alphabet City very much. There was a high concentration of boutique coffee shops already that catered to the clientele the Coffee Bandit truck drew in and as much as they had an outlaw reputation to uphold, Clint didn’t think threatening local business was the way to go. Stark’s algorithm took that into account, though, and it had only rarely led them wrong.

“You like anything with enough sugar sprinkled on it,” Natasha admonished.

“And butter. It’s gotta have butter.”

Natasha chuckled, knocking temples with him in a fond gesture and moved to hang the tablet on its hook. She pulled twenty pounds of butter out of their chest freezer and started to work on the puff pastry for the elephant ears. Clint was just contemplating making up a fresh batch of hazelnut syrup for the debut spring menu while he had access to their bay kitchen, when an alert came in from Tony. The address was thirty blocks downtown from their location. Clint and Natasha’s eyes met. “I can’t leave the dough,” Natasha told him with the seriousness of someone saying they couldn’t leave their patient to bleed out on the operating table.

“I’ll finish it. You get the bike and I’ll load you up.” Clint put on a carafe to brew and set up a few espresso shots to amp it up to Tony’s preferred octane. Natasha came back, changed into the sleek biking outfit that had been her signature as one of the most notorious bike messengers between Midtown and the Financial District: black ballistic nylon catsuit with a reflective red hourglass on the back, half-gloves and feather-light black shoes. The bike was a thing of beauty, outfitted with puncture-proof tires, an ingenious suspension system and a titanium frame which kept the whole thing at least a pound under the lightest bike on the market. She clipped her helmet on. Clint slotted the carafe into the specially designed coffee holster over the rear tire, along with a stack of mugs.

“Don’t forget to—”

“I know how to make puff pastry. We’ve been over this. Go.”

Natasha’s bike darted off into traffic like a deadly minnow in an automobile stream. Whenever Clint found himself doubting Natasha’s strength he would remind himself of first learning to make pastry with her. Clint had been sore the next day and the day after from beating frozen blocks of butter into submission whereas Natasha had simply rolled her shoulders and gotten down to work without a comment. He was sweating in spite of the chill that seeped from the walls of their building by the time the dough was ready for its first rest. Carefully remembering his lessons, he folded it with the rolling pin, wrapped it once in parchment, and lay it back in the freezer.

He dropped onto the bench seat out of an old Cadillac that they used as a couch in the bay with a sigh. He wasn’t going to nap, just rest for a bit.

Clint woke at Natasha’s gentle kick. If she had meant to do any more than wake him he’d probably be nursing a broken rib.

“Fuck. The dough,” Clint winced.

“I caught it for the second fold. Keep your panties on, sleepyhead.” Natasha smiled down at him fondly. “Stark wants a midnight pastry run and you just nominated yourself for the honor.” Clint groaned. It was Friday night which meant Tony would be working his lots hard. Nobody knew all the properties Stark owned in Manhattan but Clint was willing to bet they made up a simply staggering value when aggregated. Natasha was working on a property map based on all the locations they had delivered to, but it was far from complete. 

The properties he owned were all slivers of alleyways and places undesirable for development for various reasons. Tony had converted them into high-tech parking lots with cars stacked five and six high on rigs that looked like they should have been in a Transformers movie. They called him the Parking Czar of Midtown and his parking contraptions were simultaneously admired and feared. The bane of zoning inspectors, he was equally considered a reasonably-priced parking savior and a mounting public menace. 

Clint kinda liked the guy. He was a tech genius and rented them the completely unsuitable bay for their business. He had actually approached Clint with the truck idea after the Barton Brothers storefront was closed down due to the elder Barton’s embezzlement and a money-laundering scandal. Clint had barely escaped the backlash with his Clover machine and his thumbs. Natasha had found him hiding out in an alley from some of the mafia-like investors he hadn’t even known Barney had brought into their business venture.

She had said, “Come with me if you want to live,” and Clint had trusted her. They hid the Clover on a fire escape and she extracted him from the neighborhood by having him balance on her rear wheel riders as she wove through rush hour gridlock.

“Hey, I appreciate the save and all, but where are we going?” Clint asked when they’d made it five blocks without a noticeable tail.

“We’re almost there,” she replied. They stopped in front of a cluttered shop selling cell phone chargers and various small electronics. She glared at him until he hopped off her back wheel and dismounted herself. She walked in as though she owned the place, hanging her bike on a bike rack by the counter and walking into the back room. Clint followed; it wasn’t as though his day could get any weirder after his brother getting arrested, being chased by mafiosos and getting picked up by a mysterious bike messenger.

A service elevator that looked like it came from the 1920’s, aside from a thumbprint access panel, was in the rear. She held the door open for him.

“I never got your name.”

She smiled at him as though he was simply adorable, and Clint reconsidered the life choices that had led him to the juncture in which he currently found himself.

The elevator went down, down, down.

The basement of the building stretched between both the cell phone shop and whatever business was adjacent to it. The back curved up in a ramp leading to the street though the area they found themselves in was level and clean, if filled with junk. Hydraulics and gears took up one side while the other was largely electronics in various states of repair.

“You got him!” a man crowed from deep within a pile of hydraulics. A head popped out of the pile wearing a welding mask. The faceplate popped up to reveal bright eyes, a wild goatee and a slash of white smiling teeth.

“I did,” the woman acknowledged.

The man levered himself out the machinery. He was streaked black with engine grease and brown with smears of hydraulic fluid. He wiped his hands down with a rag and approached Clint like he was a piece of livestock he was considering buying.

“Who the hell are you guys? Not that I don’t appreciate the rescue, but I got a coffee maker that needs saving too.”

“The Clover? One of my people is retrieving it as we speak.”

“Your people—”

“Don’t worry about it. And as to your question, I’m Tony Stark.” Tony stuck out his hand, nails still rimmed in black grease. Clint hesitated only a moment before shaking. He wasn’t in the food business any longer; no need to worry about appearances.

He looked at the mysterious bike messenger. She stood in an ‘at ease’ position, legs a shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind her back. “Natasha Romanoff,” she supplied with a nod.

“Yes, your payment.” Tony dropped Clint’s hand and moved across the workshop. “The chains are at the front desk.” Natasha nodded again and faded into the clutter of the room.

“So I appreciate—”

“The guy that rescues his custom coffee maker over the cash box when the shit hits the fan,” Tony interrupted him, “is the guy I want making me coffee.”

“I’m a free agent,” Clint hedged.

“Without a place to agent. Which is why I asked you here. I have a business proposal of sorts for which I think you are uniquely suited.”

Clint hitched his hip against a workbench, crossing his arms. “I’m listening.”

“A food service truck has just come into my possession, for which I have no use. Given some retrofitting I think it would serve your purposes as a mobile base of operations.” Tony slid some photos of a truck proclaiming itself the “Falafel King” with a trio of dancing anthropomorphised falafel gracing the side. “I’ll give it to you, and space to perform the retrofit, and I have a bay I can rent you when you’re off the ground, so to speak.”

“Give me,” Clint muttered to himself. “In exchange for what?”

“Two years of free coffee, provided you don’t go under. Monday, Wednesday and Friday deliveries, Sunday morning carafes, and emergency caffination calls not to exceed twice per week. And I’m talking carafes with all the frills - this isn’t a one-cup-and-you’re-done deal. Snacks too if you decide to carry those,” he added with a greedy grin.

Clint did the math in his head. That would balance out to the market price on the truck without interest, provided the engine and transmission were in good repair. “I’d need to check out the truck.”

“Sure thing. I got it with my mechanics right now; I’ll let Barnes know you’ll be by. You’re interested?”

Clint gave Tony a grudging nod. “I’ll need to think about it.”

Tony slapped his hands together in a pleased gesture. “Excellent! Miss Romanoff will get you where you need to go.”

\--

“I’m not hauling your heavy ass around on my wheels; we’re walking,” Natasha informed him. She had changed into sneakers and barely spared him a glance before walking out the front of the electronics and miscellanea shop. Clint jogged to catch up to her.

“So what’s your deal with all of this?” Clint asked her.

Natasha shrugged one shoulder. “Strictly a business transaction.”

“What kind of business?” he asked. She threw him a venomous look to which he held up his hands defensively, “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant, like, rescuing baristos from alleyways doesn’t seem like full time employment, even in the city that never sleeps.”

She looked him up and down as though trying to decide whether he had been casting aspersions against her character. “I’m a gopher. I get things. Sometimes people. I make sure they get where they’re going.”

“Like a bodyguard?” Natasha didn’t look more than 130, and though she was probably hiding muscle under her uniform it wasn’t the build that one expected on a personal protection detail.

“More like a courier.”

“Freelance?” Clint asked. Natasha nodded once, sharply. “You like the freedom?” He got a one-shouldered shrug in reply. “To be honest I’m kind of nervous about the whole idea. I was always in with my brother...” Clint trailed off. He’d been screwed over by his brother. His brother had been in for himself and Clint had been there helping him to screw Clint over because he hadn’t been smart enough to _think_ about what he was doing. Now he was on the street; no way he could go back to the back room of Barton Brothers for his stuff. Those weird mafia guys would be hanging around, no questions. He’d have to find someone to crash with for the night. Someone who wouldn’t sell him to mobsters.

Clint had ground to a halt, groaning in hopelessness. Natasha gave him a guarded but sympathetic look. “We’re almost there.”

The sign on Barnes Automotive was off-kilter and had the look of a ransom note, ‘Barnes’ and ‘Automotive’ being in two different fonts and colors. A tall blond man was loitering outside in a white t-shirt and pressed khakis which made it clear that he wasn’t an employee of the garage. He nodded guardedly at them as they approached. Natasha quirked an eyebrow at him and he turned his head towards the dim interior. “Hey Buck, you got customers,” he shouted.

“Hang on!” came from deep within the shop.

The blond shrugged, pushing off the building’s wall and sauntered to the small shack on the parking lot next door.

Another man swaggered out of the shop wiping his hand on a greasy rag tucked in the belt of his jumpsuit. He had dark hair and sharp eyes, and was missing his left arm. He tilted his head at Clint. Clint looked him up and down, raising an eyebrow. That earned him a sardonic smile. “You Barton?” he asked. Clint nodded once, decisive. “Bucky Barnes. I got your girl in the back.” They shook hands. Clint was getting some sort of weird vibe off of Natasha over the guy but he didn’t spare the attention to figure out what was going on between the two.

Bucky led them deep into the dimness of the shop. It looked like a converted fire station, and cars were stacked on hydraulics nearly to the tall ceiling in various states of repair. The truck was in the very back by a rear set of doors. “How’s she look?”

Bucky gave a one-shouldered shrug that was eerily similar to Natasha’s. “Decent shape. I replaced the spark plugs and I’m going to have to drop the engine and change the timing belt. I’ll get the fan and water pump at the same time once they come in; probably tomorrow. Tranny looks good, brake pads are almost new. I haven’t got a chance to look at the genny yet but,” he shrugged expressively, “given the rest I’m not twisting my panties.”

“Can I look her over?”

“Knock yourself out. I’ll be up front working on the Crown Vic.”

“Hey, wait. How long before she’s ready for me?”

“Stark said give you guys a rush job. Day after tomorrow good enough for you?”

“Wow, yeah. That should do great.” Bucky nodded as though that settled things. Natasha watched his butt as he swaggered towards the land-boat with a ratchet set. Clint gave her a knowing smirk when she turned back towards the truck.

“Shut up,” she ordered.

Clint felt like he was involved in an archeological dig as he went through the truck. It hadn’t been cleaned out in the least. Maps and papers had been shuffled around to give access to the steering column in the front. The back had a deep fryer that hadn’t been emptied of oil, and the food prep stations still had lettuce and tomatoes in them, leading Clint to wonder exactly how Tony had ‘acquired’ the truck. “Is Stark on the level?” he asked Natasha who had followed him into the cramped kitchen area.

“Sometimes it seems like he isn’t,” she admitted. “Tony does business with everyone and he’s ruthless about exercising his rights in contract deals, but I don’t think he’s on the wrong side of things. Even if some days it seems like he’s his own personal mafia.”

“You known him long?” Clint pulled the electrical panel off and began poking at the circuits. Everything smelled strongly of fried garbanzo beans and tzatziki.

“Long enough.”

“You trust him?”

“I don’t trust anybody.”

Clint frowned at that, looking up at her from under the tiny sink. He believed that she believed it.

“I take contracts with him more than most,” she admitted. “He pays up on his debts and he’s generous to his friends.”

“Are you one of his friends?”

She snorted and an almost bitter smile curled one side of her perfect mouth.

\--

Tony insisted he crash on a couch in the back of his electronics shop for the night. Natasha picked him up the next morning with a bagel for his breakfast. He wasn’t sure what she was doing acting as his escort; she almost certainly could be making money in her chosen profession.

“Where to?” she asked when he finished his bagel.

“Bowery. I have to price some equipment.”

“Stark is paying for the overhaul,” she told him.

“That’s... freakishly generous.”

“He likes projects. He’ll probably insist on some custom work on the interior too.”

Clint and Natasha had taken measurements of the interior of the truck with a borrowed measuring tape and Clint had spent the evening doodling mockups of the interior setup. Compared with trying to put out full meals and baked goods, his needs were relatively modest: cooler and freezer, hookups for his Clover and an espresso machine, warming carafes, two sinks would be a plus, maybe a blender...

The trick of working in any small space was economy. No square inch of space should be unused, and no square foot of counter space should go unoccupied. The first Barton Brothers storefront had occupied a space not substantively larger than the truck and they had managed quite well.

“You’re going to need capital if you’re going to make this work,” Natasha said, staring down a row of blenders as though they might come to life and attack.

“Yeah,” Clint agreed.

“Where are you going to get it from?”

“I’ve been really trying to not think about that.” His reply had an edge to it.

She wandered the cramped industrial appliance store silently for a few minutes. “What if I put up the capital?”

“Uh...” Clint said, frozen staring at the bottom of a Vitamix blender.

Silence stretched between them. “Never mind,” she said, turning her back to him.

“No, what did you have in mind?”

She looked back at him, and her eyes asked if he really wanted to hear what she had to say. He nodded encouragingly. “A business proposition.”

She had a not-insubstantial chunk of money saved up which could see the truck through startup and the first few months until they got a handle on their revenue stream. She was, apparently, willing to let him use that chunk of money to do just that, and help with operations, for an equal stake in the business.

“That’s a lot to... We’ve known each other a day and a half.”

“More like 28 hours,” she corrected.

“Not selling this.”

“I may find Stark more annoying than tourists in rush hour sometimes, but he doesn’t make bad investments. And I don’t like fools.” She paused. “I like you.”

Clint’s mouth went dry. “I’m gay,” he said, almost immediately kicking himself for the blunt reply.

Natasha punched him in the shoulder and snorted a laugh. “Maybe I do like fools sometimes.”

\--

Clint snuck back to Barnes’ shop the next day to deal with the leftover and soon-to-be-rotting food in the soon-to-be-his truck. It looked as though the former occupants had simply been scared out of the vehicle which had then been brought to Barnes’ garage. While dumping the last load of food garbage he’d pulled from the bowels of the beast, Clint caught Bucky rummaging through his work bench for something.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

Bucky had a socket wrench held between his teeth but he somehow conveyed with his eyebrows that Clint should continue.

“Do you know where Stark got the truck?”

Bucky opened his jaws, dropping the wrench on his bench top. He pinned the tool against his hip and manipulated whatever he’d found so it caught the magnet in the wrench and held. “I got a strict ‘don’t give a fuck’ policy.”

“So... stolen? What? I just need to get an idea what I’m getting into. I’ve already been chased from my home by pseudo-Russian mobsters once this week and I just... I need to know if I should start stashing clean pairs of underwear and wads of twenties in safety deposit boxes around the city.”

That surprised a bark of laughter from Bucky. “Running with this crowd that ain’t a bad idea.” Bucky stared at the truck for a moment as though asking her what she thought about their conversation. “Stark does business with everybody - and I mean everybody - so sometimes he gets into scrapes. He’s not a bad guy though, I don’t think. He just does some bad shit without thinking about it sometimes.”

“You are literally not making a single bit of sense right now.”

“The truck was to pay off a debt, I think. Like, they had nothing else to pay with so he gets this damned truck. He tried to sell it to me, would you believe?” Bucky shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Plates are clean and by the time I get done with her she’ll be running like she just rolled off the plus-sized factory floor.”

\--

Clint returned that evening to the electronics shop and an unimpressed Natasha. “You look like hell,” she told him.

“Gee, thanks. You look like something a dog threw up too. Is it opposites day and nobody told me?” Clint asked, batting his eyelashes. He’d been sleeping on the couch in the back of a shady storefront for two days. He’d slept rougher, but he had reasons to look like hell.

“Have you been bathing?”

“I bathe. I have bathed.” He had bathed in the shop shower, aka a hose suspended from a hook, using engineer’s soap which behaved as though it was equal parts gravel and lye.

“You’re coming home with me.”

“What?”

“You smell, you look like you’ve gone on a bender, and nobody in their right mind would buy food from you. If I’m going to be giving someone my hard-earned savings to blow on some Java venture I’m going to make sure my partner has a decent place to sleep. You’re coming home with me. I borrowed you a bike.”

\--

“Are you two shacking up?” Tony asked when they rolled into his basement workshop the next morning. Clint smelled girly and was wearing a clean shirt and even though his ass hurt in ways he didn’t want to think about from the bike seat he felt amazing.

“No,” they replied in unison, Clint offended, Natasha with a flatly threatening note.

Tony held up his hands, “Okay, just asking. I have to protect my investments and history says that couples in food trucks don’t work.”

“You said it was urgent,” Natasha growled.

“Right. Barnes dropped off the truck.”

“Does it worry you how a man with one arm operated a manual transmission?” Clint asked no-one in particular.

“I made him a thing,” Tony replied. “Speaking of,” he turned, arms outstretched towards a truck that... looked an awful lot like the Falafel King, but the exterior was sporting an understated coffee bean motif.

“That’s not our truck.”

“Au contraire,” Tony contended. “I made _you_ a thing.” He pulled out a tablet and typed in some commands. The truck’s exterior blinked the black of an unpowered computer screen before another, different coffee motif appeared.

Natasha moved closer to the truck, peering at the surface suspiciously. “I developed some stuff that goes on like wallpaper but works like an LCD. I figured you guys would be a good all-weather road test for the stuff. I loaded some themes but you can modify it pretty easily; add in a menu board, customize it to whatever name you guys choose. It also has a stealth mode but I’m going to warn you right now - it’s not even through beta testing and it might go terribly wrong.”

“Duly noted,” Clint said.

“There’s also something else that’s in beta testing.” Tony handed him the pad. “Now, I’m warning you, this is my baby.” Tony almost sounded nervous.

“What is?” Natasha asked glaring at him curiously.

“JARVIS, are there any predicted hotspots in the next twelve hours?” Tony asked loudly.

The pad made a soft electronic sound. “Indeed, Sir. Class four hotspot predicted in six point two hours in Chelsea Park region. Class three hotspot predicted at approximately Park and 30th Street in ten point seven hours.”

“Thank you JARVIS,” Tony replied, as though his tablet was a person.

“What is this?”

“This, is your ticket to success,” Tony said snippily.

“This sounds like Honey I Shrunk The Butler,” Clint replied.

“JARVIS can’t help it; he’s just programmed that way.”

“By who?” Clint pushed.

“Will you quit calling it Jarvis?” Natasha demanded.

“That’s his name: Java Algorithm Referencing & Variable Integration Spatially.”

“That is... absolutely contrived,” Natasha said.

“JARVIS takes all the relevant info and spits out where you guys could make the most money.”

“And you’re giving this to us why?” Clint asked.

“Field testing,” Tony sniffed.

\--

Clint wasn’t a master welder or anything but he’d done his share of handyman work through the years. Between that and Stark’s ample and well-supplied workshop, the retrofit went quickly. The espresso machine and the Clover (rescued from the fire escape and burbling happily in Tony’s break room until installation) were installed across from one another. The freezer was tricky but Bucky and Tony both gave a hand and got the thing properly wired, drained, _and_ vented. After that it was all downhill.

Natasha was biking a lot to make rent and given that Clint had basically moved in with her and was freeloading on rent he couldn’t begrudge her not helping with the truck. She dropped by the shop to get him on her way home, and found Clint with a half-drunk bottle of beer, sprawled on the truck’s hood. For every sip he took he poured some down the hood or windshield.

“What are you doing, Clint?”

“Christening her. You want a beer?” He angled his beer bottle towards her invitingly.

“Only if by ‘beer’ you mean ‘vodka’.” Clint shook his head ‘no’. “Are you sure that’s fine for the LCD coating?”

Clint shrugged negligently. “Tony said he wanted all-weather testing. Beer is weather.”

Natasha shook her head. “So what are we christening her?”

“Faizeh,” Clint replied decisively. “I knew a bellydancer named Faizeh. Well... she called herself Faizeh. I figured since she used to be the Falafel King...” He trailed off, train of logic still unclear.

“It’s a pretty name,” Natasha offered when it became clear Clint wasn’t going to elaborate.

“I was thinking we should do some training before getting out in the world. Have you ever worked a coffee shop?” he asked. Somehow in their association and business partnership which had lasted all of a week and a half he hadn’t managed to ask her.

She frowned. “You make coffee, you give people coffee.”

Clint inhaled, preparing to laugh, but her confused, serious look stopped him. “You... wait, what?”

“I don’t drink coffee,” she said helpfully. “I like the smell though.”

Clint dropped his face in his hands. This was going to take some work.  
\--


	2. Chapter 2

_Now_

Clint set the truck’s exterior panels to the domino mask and coffee cup motif that they used when not in fear of city inspectors. He spared a single bitter thought for Natasha, nested cozy in the top bunk. She was probably dreaming of flying over the Queensboro bridge with no traffic. Abruptly his thought turned rather sappy as he imagined her legs pumping on dream pedals, getting tangled in her bed sheets.

The night was crisp enough that Clint shrugged on a jacket before rolling out. The tanks - gas and water - were topped up and the pastries were fresh out of the oven. Clint had one shoved in his mouth as he drove; he would no doubt get shit from it tomorrow morning from Natasha when she discovered the flaky pastry crumbles in the footwell of the truck. The pastry drop was at one of the vertical garages just off 6th near to where he’d picked up Faizeh. Actually, it was directly adjacent, Clint noted as he pulled into the garage’s driveway. He parked, flipped the genny to get warmed up, and hopped out of the truck.

In spite of the late hour Bucky was there talking with Tony and a tall blond who was somewhat familiar from his visits to the garage. “Who wants to pick up the pastries?” Clint asked, walking up to them.

“The coffee bandit arriveth!” Tony crowed, turning his movie star smile on Clint.

“Just no,” Clint said at the same time as the blond said, “Tony,” as though he spent a great deal of his time telling Stark exactly how unwise his ideas were.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Blond said, offering a hand. “I’m Steve.”

“Clint.” They shook. Steve’s hand was warm and calloused and his grip was firm without being painful.

Bucky jostled Steve with his stump, something Clint had never seen him do before with anybody. “Come on, you know Clint. He’s with Natasha who brings the muffins.”

A slow, teasing smile spread over Steve’s face. “I wouldn’t know - I never get there in time to eat any muffins. It’s all crumbs and paper wrappers and ‘sorry Steve, they were getting stale’.”

“I can’t help it if you never come around on the right days.” Bucky held his wrist in front of his forehead in a fake swoon, “And damn that dame can bake.”

Sometimes Clint had the feeling that Bucky had walked off the set of _A Streetcar Named Desire_ , and that he was one good rainstorm away from a mental break.

“Speaking of; where are my goodies?” Tony asked with a ‘gimme’ gesture. Clint rolled his eyes.

“In the truck. You guys want drinks?”

Tony twitched his goatee at Clint which at this point was the equivalent of Tony screaming, “Yes, please, take my body now, I’m ready for you,” with the appropriate orgasmic noises.

“I wouldn’t mind one,” Steve said coyly as though unsure if Clint had really been offering to him. Clint jerked his head towards the truck and went to put in the usuals. Tony and Bucky seemed utterly immune to caffeine regardless of the hour and drank coffee like most people breathed. Steve followed him and accepted the flat of elephant ears which Clint loaded him down with. He fired up the Clover and warmed some milk. Steve loitered out by the window while he worked.

“You and Bucky seem close,” Clint said, more to keep Steve from pacing than because he was normally such a chatterbox.

Steve’s smile was fond and wicked and sad. Clint hadn’t known the same expression could be all three at once. “Yeah. We grew up together; still share our apartment in Brooklyn.”

“Yeah? That must be nice,” Clint said, only half paying attention.

“It seemed like everyone I knew from before had moved on or...” Steve trailed off ominously. “But then Bucky came back. I guess there are silver linings and all that.”

Clint firmly had no idea what Steve was talking about, but he nodded along. “How do you take it?”

“Milk, two sugars.”

“You looked more like a black sort of guy.”

Steve shrugged. “I took it black in the Army; it makes you appreciate fresh milk.”

The Army... actually made sense. Steve had the upright posture and sharply alert eyes that said that he had trained with the military and had probably been involved in active combat. “So, Army; when did you get out?”

Steve shrugged. “About four years ago. I did my time and took my discharge papers.”

“Were you and Bucky in together?” Clint found himself interested in spite of himself. Steve’s face was so bare and expressive. He could practically see the ghostly imprints of memories chasing across the fine muscles of Steve’s face.

“Yeah. He stayed on for a second tour, though. He was this great sniper and... He was in for two years after me before...”

“That’s how he lost his arm?”

Steve nodded, not looking him in the eye. “I still feel like I shoulda been there,” he said, choked and close.

Clint climbed down from the back with the coffees and handed one to Steve. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want you talking like that.”

Steve smiled, rueful. “You don’t know how right you are. Hey, let me get those.” Steve’s massive hands easily went around three coffee cups. Clint held on to his own cup. “Do you ever get sick of coffee?” Steve asked, conversational and light.

“Did you know that coffee has more than twice the aromatic elements of wine?” Clint asked.

“I did not know that.”

“A good cup can be a light palate cleanser, or syrupy and thick. It can be bitter or acidic, earthy or bright; it can be nutty, spicy, rich, mellow, chocolatey or caramely. And that’s just the beans; we’re not even getting into milk or cream and how much, syrups, chocolates, or what you’re eating with it.”

“Don’t tell me you’re converting my boy to a coffee snob,” Bucky said with a mock horrified air.

“No. Clint was just explaining the complexities of coffee. I had no idea there was so much variety.” Steve looked rather embarrassed. “I always just drink whatever is put in front of me.”

“Barton here will cure you of that maladaptation.” Tony slung a friendly arm around Clint, nearly sloshing him with the coffee which he had just been handed. “My compliments to the Bakeantrix - these things are delicious as always.” Tony took a bite of an elephant ear and showered Clint’s shoulder with pastry shards. Clint sighed and shrugged out from under Tony’s arm, shaking off buttery pastry before it could do more damage to his shirt.

“Where is the lady of the truck, by the way?” Bucky asked. “She usually gets these runs.”

“Getting her beauty rest,” Clint replied with only the barest trace of bitterness. Tomorrow was going to suck, and he knew that as a man who had access to an unlimited espresso drip.

“That dame gets much more of it and she’ll give me a heart attack.” Bucky held his mug over his heart in a dramatic gesture.

“Buck,” Steve said warningly.

“You’d be saying the same thing if you weren’t more bent than a p-trap,” Bucky retorted, jostling Steve with his left shoulder again. Steve blushed a pink discernable even under the sodium yellow street lights.

Tony looked intrigued while Bucky appeared pleased he’d gotten a reaction out of his friend. “Hey, big guy - nothing to feel bad about. We’re all a little... bent... around here,” Tony tried out Bucky’s term and sounded as though he was attempting to reassure Steve.

“Speak for yourself, Stark,” Bucky retorted fondly.

“Are you telling me you’ve never felt a little _queer_?”

Bucky snorted. “Give me a girl like Natasha and I’d be set for life.”

“If anybody gave you a woman like Natasha I get the feeling you’d get torn apart,” Steve muttered.

Bucky slung his arm around Steve, “Oh, my friend, the happy pieces I would make.”

“That was almost poetic,” Tony commented. “Are you seriously telling me that you’ve never craved a little sausage in your pie?”

Clint snorted an incredulous laugh at the mental image.

“Believe me,” Bucky said, holding up a hand in surrender. “Between living with this stud-muffin,” he patted Steve’s pectoral in a familiar gesture, “and the Army, if there was so much as a crook in my pole I woulda figured it out there. Not that there’s anything wrong with it; you like what you like.”

“Are you telling me,” Tony stalked towards the other man, setting his coffee on a windowsill, “that if the right piece of manflesh,” he was very far into Bucky’s personal space but though he tensed minutely, Bucky wouldn’t back down, “threw his virtue at you, you wouldn’t _rise_ to the challenge?” Tony was almost chest to chest with Bucky. They were nearly of a height with eerily similar looks of challenge in their eyes.

“Nope,” Bucky said, almost into Tony’s mouth. Tony moved slowly, which was somehow the only thing that surprised Clint. He reached out with his right hand and ran his palm down the other man’s flank where his missing arm would have rested. His left came up to cup Bucky’s skull and Tony leaned in to initiate a kiss.

The kiss was very close to pornographic. Bucky tilted his head and in a rolling sweep of tongue abruptly took charge of it, roughly tongue-fucking Tony, knotting his hand into Tony’s hair and tugging and maneuvering the other man in the kiss. Tony’s hand moved from his back to the swell of his ass and pulled them together with a huff of escaping breath.

Clint flushed, aroused and confused. A glance at Steve told him the other man was in a similarly perplexing predicament. The kiss broke apart like a dropped wineglass, both men panting irregularly, raw and dangerous. Bucky wiped his hand over his mouth as though cleaning a trace of lipstick off and took a step back.

Tony blinked, eyes dark and telltale bulge at his crotch indicating what he had thought of the kiss. He looked completely gobsmacked. “Jesus, Barnes, you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Tony gasped out.

Bucky’s grin was sardonic. “Not like that,” he said. He looked meaningfully at Tony’s crotch, and then his own, unmoved by the makeout session. “I’ll stick with the dames if it’s all the same to you.”

Tony snorted, “More of the other side of the buffet for me.”

\--

Clint racked out for a few hours in the bay, stirring when Natasha opened their creaky front door looking fresh and composed, if disgruntled about being up before the sun. The previous evening didn’t seem real, but he wasn’t sure if it was due to a lack of sleep or the you-couldn’t-make-this-shit-up nature of his life. He played the evening’s conversations over in his mind again as he went through the routine of loading the truck and strapping in, preparing for Natasha’s driving. 

JARVIS directed them to a place near Battery Park they had used as a morning sell-spot from time to time. Clint handed coffee orders out on automatic, pondering Tony. He often pushed boundaries of personal space and emotional comfort, but he usually had a reason. On the outside, kissing Bucky had been to satisfy Tony’s lascivious curiosity and a bullheadedness about Bucky’s sexuality. On the other hand, Tony’s eyes had gone first to Steve as the kiss broke, sweeping back around to confront Bucky. The whole thing had the feeling of a show which Bucky had seen through and intentionally derailed.

Clint mulled that over through most of the early morning rush. Steve was obviously interested in that sort of thing, as was Tony based on the kiss. Maybe that had been Tony’s version of flirting... Maybe that had been Bucky’s version of pushing his friend at a guy.

The mid-morning rush was always slightly surly, a bit brusque, and thoroughly lucrative. A thick Brooklyn accent from one of the patrons brought Bucky back to mind. He was... oddly fixated on Natasha. Clint played over the most recent interactions he’d had with Bucky. They were few and far between. Clint quickly realized why - Natasha always volunteered to take out runs that way. He eyed Natasha as the mid-morning rush slowed. She was calm, efficient professionalism embodied. She flirted with anybody she thought she could get a tip out of and was polite to everyone else.

In their entire time of association and cohabitation Natasha had never shown an inclination towards finding a boyfriend. She didn’t go to clubs, she preferred her drinking at home with friends, or in the homes of friends, and she didn’t sleep around. Clint had ‘accidentally’ stumbled upon a truly impressive box of sex toys in the dresser by her bed, but aside from that she could have been a nun.

Natasha had a ‘don’t touch me’ attitude that rolled off her in waves. She was beautiful, yes, but she rarely did anything to accent that beauty either though makeup or clothing. She was strong, capable, and self-reliant. In that though, he recognized the faintest wisp of a crack. She made her living with her body - biking, baking, and barista’ing - and she had a powerful need to maintain control over herself because of it. 

She had a difficult time opening up, holding herself aloof from contact for a long time; when she had opened to it, it had been like a floodgate. Suddenly personal space didn’t exist between them and she was comfortable doing everything from using his thigh as a pillow when watching movies to brushing her teeth while he took a leak. If she was developing feelings for Bucky, the somewhat hostile and occasionally solicitous manner he had observed might be the result.

“What?” Natasha asked

“Nothing.” Clint shook his head. “We’re just all tapped out. Time to head home.” She narrowed her eyes at him and gave a staccato nod of agreement. She drove them back home, only jumping Faizeh over the curb twice.

Clint emptied out the tip jar, sorting the change into their till and straightening the bills. A few pieces of trash were at the bottom of the jar bequeathed by misguided customers. Wedged into the molding at the bottom of the jar was a business card which Clint shook loose.

_Philip Coulson_

**New York City Department of Health**

There was a phone number and an email but it all blurred into the background next to the seal of New York City. “Nat?” Clint asked weakly, a rushing sound flooding through his ears.

“What?” He proffered the card to her in silence. “Well fuck,” she said to herself, flipping it over. She let out a sound that was almost a chuckle. “Did you check the back, dummy?” she asked.

She held out the card for him to read. _Let’s Talk_ was scribed on the back of the card in neat cursive along with tomorrow’s date, an address, and noon.

“Oh fuck.”

“Clint,” Natasha said warningly.

“We’re fucked.”

“Clint.”

“We’re so fucking fucked our fucks are fucked sideways.”

“Quit cursing and calm down.” She sat him down on the bench seat with some force and went through the motions of pulling an espresso shot. She poured a shot of syrup and a shot of bourbon into it and put it in Clint’s hands. “Drink,” she ordered. Clint drank.

“He found us. He— I served him coffee. He drank our coffee.”

“And ate a pastry if this buttered thumbprint is anything to go by,” Natasha told him, scrutinizing the card.

“Are you—?” Clint groaned and slumped over on the seat, covering his head with his hands and the demitasse cup.

“Big deal. So he found us. If he’d wanted to issue a citation he could have. He didn’t.”

“So he must be waiting to reel us both in so he can throw us in county lockup.”

Natasha gave him an unimpressed look. “You’re such a drama queen.”

“When has my drama been unwarranted?” Clint demanded. If he was a drama queen it was because there was an excess of drama in his life and it was an adaptive behavior.

Natasha rolled her eyes and sat by his head. Clint inched down the couch so he could lay his head in her lap, legs dangling off the end of the seat. She ran her fingers through his hair obligingly. “He probably just wants to talk, like the card says.”

“He’s going to shut us down,” Clint insisted. They lay in silence. Machinery in the rear of the warehouse kicked on and began producing something with metallic rattles. Clint breathed in the diesel and rubber smells, the slight movement of damp air and the strange half-light that was what came through the obstructed windows. “I like this. I like us. I don’t want to give this up,” he whispered, almost inaudible under the sounds of fabrication.

“All things must end _pashka_.”

They fell asleep like that for a few hours, Natasha migrating down to be tucked against the seat back using Clint as a warm, dense blanket. They woke when the alert went off informing them that Tribeca was brewing up the perfect storm of caffeine deprivation that would reach critical levels within the hour. Between that and a predicted storm by 92nd Street the next day, they decided on quick scones for the evening baking. The oven in their bay had been pilfered from an actual bakery and had twelve racks they could bake on simultaneously. Clint had been resistant to the idea of selling anything but coffee, but Natasha was persuasive when she put her mind to it. After a week of slipping Tony baked goods, the oven and a work bench had appeared in their space. Natasha kept Clint almost busy enough, mixing, folding, and shaping scones to not worry about what he would do about Mr. Coulson, Health Inspector.

The 5:30 AM rush wasn’t so much a rush as a zombie horde, and it was terrifying but lucrative. They sold out of baked stock by 9:30 and they were out of beans by 10. They were back at base by 10:30 and the truck was cleaned by eleven.

“You need to go if you’re going to make your meet,” Natasha told him.

“You should be there too. This isn’t just my truck.”

Natasha shrugged. “He doesn’t know my face. It’s best if he doesn’t learn it.”

“You should still be there. Where is there, by the way?”

“Veselka’s, East Village. Nice and public. Good bike lanes. I recommend the dumplings.”

“Didn’t we sell just down the street from there last week?” Clint asked, trying to place the name.

Natasha nodded, disappearing to change into her civilian bike outfit. They rode towards the meet together; Clint was fair enough on a bike, but he knew Natasha was taking it easy on him so he could keep up. When she rode it was like watching a beautiful mix of woman and machine. She’d clip in and become part of the traffic stream, flowing like water, titanium frame gripped between her thighs like it was a beast with a mind of its own instead of simple gears and spokes. Clint was lucky not to get run over by delivery trucks or hit a pothole and eat pavement. He recognized the place as they approached down Second, a long diner on the corner with wraparound windows and patio. Natasha signalled him and sped on past without stopping. She would park her bike out of sight and approach separately.

The diner had a lunch rush but it wasn’t so full that there wasn’t a table for them. Clint felt a flaming ball of ice settle into his stomach when he saw Coulson. He was seated at a patio table with some paperwork, suit jacket draped over the back of his chair and shirtsleeves rolled up to take in some of the first warm, sunny weather of the season. Seemingly feeling Clint’s eyes on him, he glanced up and raised two fingers in greeting. Clint tried to swallow around the massive lump in his chest that was somewhere between fear and an agony over the unknown. “Man up, Barton,” he told himself sternly before shaking his jacket into place and wheeling his bike over.

“I thought you might be more comfortable outside,” Coulson said, as though the comfort of the people he was going to put out of business was really of any concern to him.

Clint locked his bike against the restaurant's patio rail and shuffled awkwardly. “Yeah, I guess so.”

He remained standing.

“Would you care to sit down?” Coulson offered, indicating the free chair.

“Sure, okay.” Clint sat. He jiggled the chair around until he could keep his bike, and Coulson, and the door the waitress came out of in sight. He rubbed his palms down his pant legs. There were coffee grounds on one knee.

Coulson seemed content to finish his paperwork while Clint worked himself into a lather. Clint finally picked up the menu to keep his hands from rubbing a hole in the thighs of his pants. “I recommend the stuffed cabbage,” Coulson offered and goddamn it, Clint had not asked for his advice on lunch and he didn’t even really want lunch he was just here to find out how the shady government agent was going to tear his life apart.

“I hate cabbage,” Clint replied almost petulantly.

“The perogies then,” Coulson tried again.

“Look, man, I don’t want your lunch suggestions. I just came here to—”

The waitress somehow timed her arrival perfectly to interrupt him. “Can I get you gentlemen something to drink? Soda? Lemonade?”

“I think we’re ready to order,” Coulson told her. He took the damned stuffed cabbage.

“I’ll have the fucking perogies,” Clint said, startling the waitress.

“Would you like potato, potato cheese, meat, mushroom, sauerkr—”

“Just give me some damned perogies,” Clint growled, really at the edge of what he could handle decision-wise.

The waitress tried to put her best face on, “Of course, Sir.”

Coulson frowned as though rethinking something. “Perhaps we can start again,” he suggested, shuffling the papers into a goddamned attache case. He shifted forward so all his attention was on Clint and favored him with a genuine half-smile. “I’m Phil Coulson. I’m with the health department. I’m really glad you decided to take the time to come meet with me.”

Clint glared suspiciously. A flash of red hair in his peripheral vision told him Natasha had gotten herself seated within earshot of their table. “Clint Barton,” he offered when it was clear Coulson was done talking.

“From Barton Brothers.”

Clint frowned. “Yeah.”

“I was sad to see you guys closed down,” Coulson told him and, damn it, he sounded sincere.

“So was I,” Clint admitted to his roll of flatware.

“Look, I don’t want to be the guy who beats around the bush with you. Simply put, what you and your partner,” Clint filled in _accomplice_ , easily reading between the lines, “do with coffee is amazing. I can’t remember the last time I had coffee that good. And the pastries; truly a credit to the French tradition.”

Clint narrowed his eyes at Coulson. Compliments were not what he was expecting; this guy was probably softening him up for some sort of ninja death-strike. “Thanks.”

“Quite honestly, you guys are eating up more resources than one unlicensed food truck has any rights to, especially considering you haven’t had any illnesses linked back to your truck and the nature of your comestibles turnaround make vermin a low probability issue. My boss just hates loose ends like you flying around the city trumpeting to the world that you don’t need a permit to operate in Manhattan.”

“We’ve never had vermin,” Clint said, affronted.

Coulson nodded in agreement.

“Why am I here?” Clint asked as the pause stretched longer and more ominous.

“I’d like to bring you in,” Coulson answered thoughtfully.

Clint was over the rail and unlocking his bike before Coulson could respond. Natasha was halfway out of her chair preparing to ‘accidentally’ spill her cherry coke all over Coulson’s expensive shirt and pants as a distraction.

“Wait! Bring you into the fold. Not— Jesus I said that wrong.” The genuine distress in the other man’s voice was all that stopped Clint from fleeing the scene.

“Into what fold?”

“I’d like to help you get licensed - properly licensed.”

Clint could count on one hand the times people had told him they wanted to help him and had followed through on it. Somehow between the smile lines and the tired, earnest expression... Looking into Coulson’s eyes he believed him. 

“I’m sorry I startled you. I’m—” he gave a small self-deprecating laugh, “I don’t think I have the authority to arrest anybody. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I misspoke and I apologize.”

“I,” Clint began, unsure what he was going to say. He stalled out before getting any further.

“The process doesn’t have to be difficult. I’m sure you’re properly trained and your truck would be capable of getting into code without too much trouble. It’s more than formalities but it’s less than a full overhaul.”

“If I say no? If I just let you guys keep chasing us?” Clint challenged.

Coulson sighed, glancing down at his fingers splayed on the table top. “The choice is yours. I won’t force you into doing anything,” Coulson admitted. “You can run a business you’re truly proud of, though. One that doesn’t have to keep an eye out for health inspectors or police. One that can advertise openly. If you were properly licensed you could sell on government property. I assure you, that could be a lucrative addition to your current range.”

“This isn’t just my decision,” Clint told him.

“Your partner?”

Clint nodded in confirmation. Their meals arrived at that moment and Coulson was momentarily distracted. He gave that full, rapt attention to his cabbage rolls and Clint found himself momentarily jealous of the food. One bite of his dumplings told him _why_ Coulson was giving his full attention to the cabbage rolls. Clint stuffed a pierogi in his mouth in an angry gesture. 

...and closed his eyes and groaned. He chewed around the too-big mouthful, reveling in the flavors that said ‘home’ and ‘safe’ and ‘comfort’ in spite of the fact that he had never associated those feelings with anything but coffee. The dumpling skin was pliant, just a bit chewy, and soaked in butter. The filling was potatoes and cheese with the slightest sweetness of onion and some kind of herb. Clint slumped down to rest his forehead against the table, swallowing almost regretfully. 

Clint raised his head from the table top, the memory of potatoes and cheese drawing his eyes back to his plate.

Coulson was frozen, fork and knife in hand as though he was at some kind of fancy restaurant instead of an eastern European diner. When Clint tore his eyes from his plate he saw Coulson’s incredulously delighted smirk. “Good?” he asked, making eye contact.

“I hate you,” Clint told him, biting a second dumpling in half. It had meaty filling and it was possibly better than his first one. “Jesus, how is this so good,” he muttered to himself.

Coulson chuckled and went back to eating, excising neat portions of rolls off, popping them in his mouth, and chewing, eyes half-closed. Clint stared. The noon sun was colluding with early butterflies and falling flower blossoms to make Coulson look like a foodie Disney princess. The sun was a soft golden aura, burnishing the slightest hint of scruffy beard on his cheek. Clint swallowed again.

“Working this job, it’s easy to forget sometimes why I do it.”

Clint’s eyes flew from where they had strayed to the other man’s tie knot to his face. “And, uh, why is that?” Coulson waved off the inquiry with his knife in a self-deprecating gesture. “No, I mean, how did you start doing this? I mean, no offense but you don’t seem like the usual stick-up-the-ass food safety officer.”

Coulson snorted. “You’d be surprised,” he replied with a crinkle at the corners of his eyes that was almost a smile. “I actually worked with the FDA for years out of Washington inspecting meat packing plants.” He shuddered expressively. “Down in the trenches,” he added. “I just... Factory farming wasn’t what I wanted to be involved with any longer.”

“So shutting down the little guy in the Big Apple seemed like a better gig?” Clint asked.

“Working with local small businesses to meet health code requirements? Yes. It benefits them as well as the public. It might be annoying and sometimes costly but it’s for everyone’s benefit.” Clint mulled that over for a few dumplings. “Would you like to try some of mine?” Coulson offered. The offer was unexpected to say the least; Clint and Natasha both were notoriously jealous of their food and he had little cause to eat with anybody else.

“I don’t like cabbage,” he reminded Coulson. Coulson gave him a look that clearly said, ‘come now’. “Fine.”

Coulson ferried a neat round off the end of one roll to Clint’s plate and withdrew his cutlery, waiting expectantly. Clint glared at the generous bite. Clint pushed back from the table, distancing himself from the cabbage in a show of defiance. He would eat it when he damned well felt like it.

“So say my partner agrees to this, how will it go down?” Clint asked.

“You make it sound unseemly,” Coulson replied, amused. Clint stared at him; this whole thing seemed kind of seedy. Government employees never wanted to strike deals or look out for the little upstart. They just brought down the entire (considerable) weight of their organizations to crush the little guy, or stamp him into another cookie-cutter robot minion.

“Okay, fair enough,” Coulson allowed. “I’ll need to inspect your truck along with any food prep areas outside of the truck. I’ll need to interview your employees and everyone will need to pass a vendor’s permitting process. I’ve got a payment plan agreement worked up if a lump sum isn’t an option for fees. You’ll also need to get your taxes in order and show evidence of either past returns or estimated tax payments. I’ll be available to help with any of the process which you would require. Within reason. From the date of first inspection you would have a three month grace period to come fully into code.”

Clint frowned. “What do you get out of this?”

Coulson’s eyebrows went up as though he was impressed Clint had the forethought to ask. Clint couldn’t decide if he was offended or proud. “First, I bring in one of the most notorious violators of health code in the city, sending a clear message that that behavior is not tolerated. Second, you would provide a proof of principle for a more cooperative model of response regarding repeat offenders which may lead to policy changes. Third, and this isn’t a hard requirement, but I hope you’ll consider it...” Clint braced himself for all the possible horrible, impossible, degrading suggestions the other man could make. “If I do get policy changes enacted I’d like for you to act as a mentor for other businesses going through the transition.”

“I know you don’t know me from Adam, but I’ll tell you this right now; you don’t want me being the role model for _anybody_.”

Coulson raised his eyebrows in mild, surprised reproof. “Then think of it like an AA sponsor. Regardless, that’s optional and a long way off.”

The waitress, sensing the tension in the moment, slipped the bill onto their table silently. Clint reached for his wallet but Coulson waved him off, slipping a credit card into the billfold. Coulson finished his lunch, wiping his mouth with his napkin. He spared a glance at the lone morsel of food left on Clint’s plate and one for Clint himself.

“I don’t want you to feel rushed, but I’ll need to hear from you within the week. I won’t be able to keep my boss’ other people off of you if you haven’t been brought in by then.”

“Other people?” Clint asked.

Coulson smiled humorlessly. “Rest assured, Mr. Barton; I’m the easy way and you do _not_ want to try it the hard way.”

\--

“I don’t even want to do it the easy way,” Clint moaned, flopping on the bench seat couch in a hopeless ennui.

Natasha threw his legs off the bench, causing Clint to cantilever upright, and sat in the space she had cleared. Clint threw his head back so it rested on the back of the seat. Natasha reached over and linked their fingers together. “I’ll back your play, whatever you decide,” she told him solemnly.

Clint groaned. “You’re... that’s not how partnerships work. You’re supposed to tell me what we should do.”

Natasha digested that for a moment and started laughing. That set Clint off. “Christ, we’re hopeless,” Clint said. He rested his head on Natasha’s shoulder and she rested her cheek against his hair.

“Whatever we do I’ll be there for you,” Natasha told him quietly. It was the most bald statement of support and solidarity Clint had ever heard her make, and it touched a deep, broken part of him.

He sighed, rubbing his cheek against her shoulder. “I can’t keep going like this.” He paused, the words hanging heavily between them. Natasha allowed him the time to mull his words over. “I know you get off on the chase - don’t get me wrong, I do too sometimes - but... Maybe we should try to go straight.”

Natasha was silent for long enough that Clint twisted around so he could see the stern jut of her jaw. She looked down at him. “Okay.”

He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, icy relief washing over him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” She agreed, more certain. “Okay.” Clint grinned happily. Natasha looked scared, but also pleased. “I can get my jollies somewhere else,” she added.

“Sometime outside of work hours,” Clint agreed.  
\--


	3. Chapter 3

Saying they were going to do it and actually jumping in the pool with the sharks was another matter entirely. Natasha kindly ignored his sleeplessness that night, and his jumpiness the next morning through the early rush and a flash call to 94th. The coffers were fat with the morning’s take when they got to home base, cleaning out the truck and roasting beans for later.

He leaned against Faizeh’s driver side door, just to catch his breath for a minute and clear his head. He was dizzy and his stomach was sour and angry.

Natasha guided him to sit down and handed him a mug. His cell was balanced over the mouth of the mug, and whatever the mug contained, it was letting off some serious liquor fumes. “It’s like a band-aid,”she told him sternly.

“I just use superglue,” he replied. She gave him an unimpressed look. He dug the worn card from his pants pocket, stared at the neatly scrawled, “Let’s Talk,” and took the mug. His palms were sweating. Fireworks of terrified anxiety went off under his breastbone. He made a helpless sort of whimpering whine, drank the contents of the mug, and dialled before he could think better of it.

The liquor burned down his throat waging war on the anxious fireworks in a roiling, dizzy nausea. The phone rang.

“This is Sitwell,” a strange voice answered.

“I was calling Coulson,” Clint said, sharp and accusatory. Natasha glanced over at his tone, eyebrows raised. He shook his head.

“And you got me,” Sitwell replied. “Coulson is out on a call. What can I do for you?”

“I was calling Coulson,” Clint insisted. He was met with a silence that was somehow impassive. “Can I leave him a message?”

“Sure.”

Clint thought. “Let him know I want to come in.”

“Uh... can I get a name or a phone number?” Sitwell asked.

“Right.” Clint rattled off his cell number.

“And just... you ‘want to come in’? That’s what you’re going with?”

“He’ll know what I mean.”

“I’m sure he will,” Sitwell muttered, probably thinking it was just to himself.

\--

Sitwell leaned back in his chair, holding a folded slip of paper up for Phil. “Your coffee hottie called. Said he was ready to ‘come in’.” Phil pinked and snatched the slip of paper out of Sitwell’s two-fingered grip.

“I’m sure he didn’t say it like that,” Phil admonished.

Sitwell shrugged. “No, but he was pretty put off he didn’t get you directly.”

Hill joined their conversation, dropping some papers with Sitwell. “One day to reel the coffee hottie in, though, that’s pretty impressive.” Phil pinked even further. Somehow Sitwell and Hill were the only ones who could get under his skin like that. Any other coworker, he would have been able to blow off their snide comments. Sitwell and Hill knew him well enough that the barbs were tipped with hints of truth and real emotion.

He did have more than a passing fondness for the caffeinating Robin Hood that was Clint Barton. He’d visited Barton Brothers intermittently before it was closed due to Mafia, and always enjoyed both the beverages and the staff. The thrill of the chase and the clandestine nature of his... feelings... had heightened the experience and softened the blow of professional failure after professional failure at bringing the truck to heel. 

Now with the prospect of bringing the truck to code within the realm of possibility he wondered if he had been more in love with the idea of taming Clint Barton than the reality of it.

“He’s flighty. He’s probably just more comfortable talking with someone he knows. He seemed to think I was going to arrest him.”

“You _could_ have a bench warrant out for his arrest if you’d enforced the proper fines against him and brought him before a judge,” Hill grumbled.

“And what good would that have gotten us? A headache with legal and a bench warrant that, even if it was enforced, would just put a working man in jail for a few months,” Phil contested hotly.

“Well, it sounds like you got him. Just don’t make Fury regret this; I would hate to suffer through another month like in 2012,” Sitwell cautioned.

“That was a dark time,” Hill agreed.

\--

Clint felt the buzz of his cell ringing in his back pocket, but he’d just gotten in a screaming match with the Vitamix which had ended with him covered in a sticky coffee frappe and Natasha was trying to get JARVIS to reconnect to the wireless so they could take credit card payments and the vibration against his ass cheek was too much. Whoever it was could go to his messaging service. The spring menu was selling well; the season for iced drinks was closing in and the tuxedo mochas were particularly popular. 

The three PM rush dealt with, Clint took a moment to lean out the window and appreciate the spring weather. The air hadn’t yet taken on the warm-garbagey scent of summer. Tulips bobbed in the light breeze of traffic. The screams of delighted children playing soccer drifted over from the park behind them, warning him the predicted Soccer Parent deluge was on schedule.

“Has Coulson called you back?” Natasha asked, wiping down the espresso maker for the fifth time that day.

“Shit.” Clint wiped his hands down on a bar rag and pulled out his phone. The missed call was from an unlisted number but the little envelope icon indicated he had a message. Clint dialed his voicemail.

It was Coulson sounding a little distracted. “Mr. Barton, it’s Phil Coulson calling you back. I was pleased to hear you got back to me so quickly. Sorry I was away from my desk when you called. In the future you can use my cell.” Coulson read off a number. “I’d like to get the process going as quickly as possible; I’m free this evening if that works for you. I... let me know know a good location to meet. Otherwise get me some days and times in the next week and we’ll set something up.”

The tightening knot of tension was back pulling the rapid beat of his heart towards the unsettled roil of his stomach. “He wants to meet tonight,” he told Natasha. “Can we have the truck ready?”

“It’s ready now.” She shrugged negligently. “The bay is never going to pass so it doesn’t really matter what state the truck is in anyway.”

Clint dropped his head. “You’re right. Shit.”

“Hey,” Natasha shoulder checked him, “Suit said he’d help you get everything fixed up.”

“He said he’d help _us_.” Natasha shrugged. “You really think he’ll do it?”

“I think he believes he’ll do it,” she said. Whatever else Natasha was, she was good at reading people, so much better than Clint. “Let him see the bay and give Faizeh a once-over.”

“Yeah. You’ll be there for moral support, right?”

Natasha barked a laugh. “I got a thing tonight.”

“You never have a thing!” Clint told her, sounding offended.

“Excuse me. Can I have a turtle frappe please,” the first of the soccer moms called through the window, waving a credit card.

\--

Clint had chickened out and texted Coulson the address for their bay and 7PM instead of calling and having to talk to him. They did an especially good cleaning of the truck, bleaching down the countertops, dust-bustering the corners and draining the freezer. Natasha left him around six to go to her secret thing leaving Clint to man the coffee roaster and stew in anxiety.

The stress of the rest of the day and night caught up with him and he passed out on their couch. Clint startled awake from the sense of being loomed over.

“I’m sorry,” Coulson said, stepping back and putting his hands up in a non-threatening posture. “I didn’t mean to startle you - I just came in the front and nobody was around.”

“Jesus, no.” Clint swiped a dribble of drool off his chin. “I shoulda... Just give me a sec.” He rolled to sitting and hung his head between his legs, trying to will himself to be awake. He offered a crooked smile to Coulson. “Hey, Coulson, welcome. You want a drink? I have fresh beans.”

“I wouldn’t want-”

“It’s no trouble,” Clint said cutting off his protest. “What’s your poison?”

“Whatever you’re having is fine. And call me Phil. We’re going to be working together: no reason to stand on formality.”

“Phil,” Clint mused, letting the name run over this tongue. He swung up into the truck and loaded the fresh beans into the hopper. The routine as much as the scent of fresh coffee woke him up. He put a little flare into the foam, drawing a four leafed clover in Coul- Phil’s mug. Phil smiled down into the mug when Clint handed it to him. The smile crinkled the fine lines at the corners of his eyes in an entirely pleasing fashion. Clint berated his stomach for the flip-flop it did. He was done with this anxiety crap, goddamn it.

Phil took his time with the coffee, spinning the mug around once to look at the foam from all angles and then raising it to his nose for a deep inhalation. Clint pulled some biscotti from their emergency baking store and put them on a plate. When he got back Phil had taken a sip and was running his tongue along his lips with his eyes closed, lapping up a rogue whisp of foam.

Clint’s stomach flip-flopped harder than a fish just pulled from the water. He realized in a blinding strike of clarity that it wasn’t so much his stomach as an unholy congress of his heart and his groin which were having a summit in his middle bits.

Phil opened his eyes and colored. Clint was frozen, plate of biscotti half extended towards Phil. Phil took a cookie to distract from the fact that they were both embarrassed. “This is very good,” he commented, dunking the biscotti in his coffee and letting it soak a moment before delicately nibbling off the end.

Clint pulled a crate over to the bench seat to act as a coffee table and sat down. After an indecisive moment Phil sat next to him. He was completely out of place in the space but didn’t let it show. He was wearing a nice suit, obviously having arrived straight from work and his high-class loafers were already marked with the pervasive dirt of the factory floor. Clint soaked his biscotti too long and then made a mess of getting it into his mouth. A dribble of coffee moved over the same track he’d wiped drool from not too long ago.

“What do you call this?” Phil asked, raising the mug illustratively. “It’s almost a cappuccino, but-”

“It’s called a flat white. We had this Australian guy working at the shop for a season that introduced us- me to them.” Clint curled in on himself a little thinking about the old shop. “It’s kind of like the bastard child of a latte and a cappuccino.”

“It’s very good,” Phil repeated, finishing off his cookie without endangering his tie once.

“So, um... how do you want to do this?”

“I was going to do a standard inspection, mark down what needs to be changed to get you up to code. I figured we could discuss some of the more major overhauls to determine what would work best for you.”

“Oh.” Clint nodded. “That sounds good.”

“Excellent.” Phil eyed Faizeh. “Is that the same truck you normally utilize?” he asked, frowning at it.

“Yep.”

Phil looked the truck up and down. “It’s not... Did you paint it?”

“Oh, no. The display is just off. It conserves energy.” Clint jumped in the truck and snagged JARVIS from his peg. He flipped on their usual theme.

“Damn,” Phil whistled. “It does more than just that one?” Clint flipped through a few themes. “I always used to wonder how you guys disappeared so quickly. I figured you had some kind of removable painted panels or something.”

“Nope, just one tech genius.”

“Huh. It seems like you’ve gotten a lot of people on your side in this venture,” Phil said thoughtfully.

“You included, man. You’re on Team Barton now too.”

Phil gave Clint a look that was soft and wry and shy all at once.

\--

“Holy fuck, Natasha, did you get mugged?”

Natasha smiled at him, running her tongue down the split in her lip with a lascivious smile. “No.” There was an uncoiled sort of satiety in her body that he had never seen before.

“Did you... get laid?” he asked hesitantly. She had a bruise down the side of her face and across her windpipe. If he had to guess he would say that the rest of her looked equally beaten, and he did not want to think about the sex that would have resulted in that sort of punishment.

She smiled slow and predatory, “No...”

“Do you... need me to beat someone up?” Natasha had always struck him as a woman uniquely able to take care of herself, but her appearance was worrying and he felt he should offer.

She shook her head fondly. “No, _pashka_.” She kissed him on the temple and ruffled his hair up on one side. “I’m just trying out getting my kicks outside of work hours.”

“Are they literal kicks? Because it looks like someone beat the shit out of you.” Natasha shrugged. “I just worry about you, is all.”

“I know. I’m good. I’ll tell you if I’m not.” Clint’s worried eyes followed her as she prepared for bed. “Tell me about the Suit.”

“Phil was actually really decent. He asked about you again. You’re going to have to turn yourself in eventually.”

Natasha tossed her hair so it curtained across one side of her face. It was a gesture she used when she was feeling discomfited. “Yes, but ‘eventually’ doesn’t mean ‘immediately’.”

“Phil said he would drop off the full reports sometime tomorrow. He said the truck was almost okay; some stuff about venting and we have to seal the genny from the innards with a different kind of fiberglass or... anyway, the real work is going to be at the bay.”

“Did he tell you we should move?” Natasha sounded mildly curious but Clint knew the question was important to her. Natasha hated being told what to do, and she would likely see Coulson’s reaction to their use of an unsuitable work space as a litmus test for her blooming respect.

“I think he knew better than that,” Clint replied guardedly.

“But you could tell he wanted to.”

Clint nodded. “We don’t have another space, though. If there was another space we’d already be there.”

“We’ll make it work, Clint.” She said it with firm finality. Clint welcomed the certainty her statement solidified in him. “Now go to sleep. We have to be up and out in six hours.”

\--

_I’ll be by around 12:30 with papers._

Clint read the text and showed it wordlessly to Natasha. She nodded thoughtfully and continued pulling espresso with a mechanical grace. They closed up shop not long after and drove back to the bay.

“Are you going to stay and talk with the guy?”

Natasha shook her head. “No. If you still trust him this afternoon you’re authorized to set up a three-way meet between us.”

Clint frowned at her. Natasha was extremely cagey by nature and private to the point of paranoia but he couldn’t fathom why she bore an extra level of mistrust for Phil. She disappeared and he made two cups with the Clover, expecting Phil to be punctual.

He was, surprisingly, fifteen minutes late. He knocked on their external door before entering, encumbered by two bags of takeout and his attache case. Clint tried to help him but Phil waved him off. He set the takeout bags on their baking counter and the attache on the chest freezer.

“Phil,” Clint greeted, feeling a little guarded at the way the other man took over his space in two simple moves.

“Clint,” Phil replied, warm and just a little bit rushed. He held out his hand to Clint and they shook. He tucked his fingers into his back pockets feeling a desire to curl into himself. Phil seemed to sense his abrupt shyness and gestured at the takeout. “It’s my lunch hour and I figured I’d bring enough for two. I hope you’re okay with pork buns. There was quite the lunch rush but they’re always worth the wait.”

Clint’s brain short-circuited equally from savory smells wafting out of the takeout bags and the fact that _Phil had bought him lunch_. “I hope you don’t expect me to put out on our first date,” Clint said before his brain could catch up and no, no, NO that was not what he meant to say. He meant to say something flirty and suave that would put Phil at ease and maybe get him to take his suit jacket off and kick up his loafers on the coffee table/crate and outline his ideas for bringing the bay up to code. Clint kicked himself over and over.

A little confused, polite crinkle appeared between Phil’s brows as though he didn’t quite know what to say in response and was instead choosing silence. “I made coffee,” Clint said finally to fill the silence.

Phil smiled and the awkward spell was broken. “Lunch and then paperwork?” Phil asked. Clint got coffee. Phil unpacked his bags. There were a dozen fluffy white buns stuffed with meat and pickles, and a paper boat of french fries covered in some kind of spicy powder.

Clint was abruptly ravenous and he stared at the buns, waiting for permission. Coulson positioned the fries equidistant from each of them and sat. “Have at,” he said, gesturing at the food. Clint picked up a bun and cradled it, trying to keep the stuffing in. Coulson had a similar technique, cupping a bun in his hand and shoving errant shreds of pickled vegetables back in with his other hand when they made breaks for it. At some point he’d tucked his tie into his shirt so it wouldn’t be in danger, and Clint found that dangerously adorable.

Clint took a bite. The bun was fluffy and chewy and crisp. The filling was tangy and sweet, rich with fat, meaty and somehow still fresh-tasting with a vinegary crunch. “Oh my god,” he said through chewing. That elicited a tiny, pleased smile from Phil. “This is the best thing I’ve put in my mouth in a while,” Clint said before the phrase could go through editing.

Clint colored while Phil let out a tiny huff of laughter. “I’m glad you like them.”

“Where did you _get_ these?” Clint took another bite and it was possibly better than the first.

Phil shrugged. “A little shop in the East Village. I helped them get up to code so I knew they made good stuff. Try the steak ones.”

“They are different flavors?” Clint asked, excited but disbelieving. Phil smirked indulgently. They sorted the buns into groupings by filling and Phil told him about each filling, and the trial that had been getting the resturant approved for pickling.

Phil was... easy to be around. Most of Clint’s life had been raucous and brash, demanding and frenetic. Clint had lived day-to-day for a lot of years, not only because he didn’t know how to plan, but because the idea of being able to predict what the next day would bring was foreign. His brother had strong-armed him through a lot of life and it seemed that fate had done the rest of the directing, leading him smack-dab into the middle of his current predicament. Phil was an embodiment of everything Clint’s life had never been. Could never be. He was ordered and self-contained. His very presence seemed to demand discretion rather than attention. He was a tranquil pond and Clint felt drawn to him.

Their lunch was over too quickly, partially because Clint ate with the speed and determination of someone used to food running out before he was full and partly because it was so damned delicious. Clint groaned in appreciation and dropped his head back. Phil was chasing bits of spice powder around the fry boat licking it off his finger when it stuck. “That was really good.” Good didn’t convey how good it was.

Phil’s shields were down, his finger stuck in his mouth as he sucked the salt off of it. He smiled, truly and genuinely without any agenda His crows feet crinkled and wicked lines formed around his mouth and Clint felt it like a punch to the gut that he wanted to make the feelings that drove that expression happen over and over and over again. Phil saw something of his thoughts in his expression and ducked his head, almost shy. “I’m glad. Good food is always the way to start a lunch meeting.”

“Well, you seem to know where all the amazing food in the city is,” Clint replied. “Is that like some kind of freakish superpower?”

Phil’s eyebrows crinkled in confusion. “What do you normally do for lunch?”

Clint shrugged. “Na- my partner and I boil a lot of eggs in the electric kettle. Canned tuna. Anything to offset our alarmingly high pastry and sweetened beverage consumption.”

That news seemed to devastate Phil. “That’s what you normally have for lunch? Boiled eggs and tuna?”

“Hey, it’s healthy and cheap,” Clint said defensively, suddenly feeling he had once again walked into hostile territory.

Phil deflated. “I’m sorry. That was... I didn’t mean to imply...” He frowned. “Food is one of the only necessary pleasures in life. The idea that you’re not... There’s so much wonderful variety and...” It seemed as though Phil had launched into several different lectures or streams of thought at the same time and was unable to articulate any of them fully. He sighed. “Can I tell you a secret, Clint?”

“Sure.”

“I’m in this line of work for all the noble reasons I talked about before, but mostly, I love good food and I love helping the people who make good food stay afloat.”

Phil finished off his coffee cup as he stood. Clint could almost see the armor of professionalism reassembling itself around Phil as he wiped his mouth down, brushed his front free of any lingering crumbs, and pulled his tie from the confines of his shirt. Clint stood to get about the business of going over the bay’s inspection. Phil’s hand darted out, napkin at the ready, to wipe a trace of hoisin sauce off of Clint’s cheek, startling them both.

\--

Natasha slipped into the bay a few minutes after Phil left, indicating she had probably been watching the door for his exit. Clint was poring over the notes Phil had left him. The requirements for a food preparation area were many and varied, but the way Phil had laid them out they also seemed attainable. Phil’s precise handwriting laid out construction ideas for the necessary internal walls to partition off the bay from the rest of the warehouse floor.

Natasha quirked an eyebrow in a ‘how did it go?’ expression.

Clint shrugged. “Well enough,” he answered the unspoken question. “We’re set up for a meet-and-greet on Thursday morning.” Thursday was their iron-clad day off. It was the only day they wouldn’t respond to Tony’s call and a day they usually devoted to catching up on much-needed sleep and not seeing one another. Giving up the morning was a sacrifice but Natasha understood the importance of the meet-and-greet, and she nodded. “He left the final report.” Clint waved the sheaf of papers separate from the drafting paper they’d been using to sketch out solutions to the various issues.

Natasha looked at the papers and then at the litter of bun-wrappers and raised an eyebrow, cracking the tiniest bit of a smile. “He brought you lunch,” she stated.

Clint colored. “Yeah.”

“And you didn’t save me any,” she chastised.

Clint’s expression went from shy embarrassment to concern in a moment. “I should have - I’m sorry Nat, did you—”

She ruffled his hair fondly. “Don’t sweat it, Cupid. Show me the report.”  
\--


	4. Chapter 4

JARVIS had a blinking, _Message waiting from Mr. Stark_ on his screen when Clint bothered to check. Clint tapped the screen and, of course, it was a video message. The angle was odd - almost up Tony’s nose. He’d obviously recorded it from his phone, sitting on his benchtop while he stood over it.

“I heard a suit was poking around my property. I want details this afternoon. Come prepared.” The message cut off. Clint sighed and packed the paperwork in with the pecan rolls. Natasha had already strapped the coffee onto her bike and gave Clint an impatient look.

He loaded up the half and half and signalled he was ready. Natasha walked her bike out of the bay and was off, an icebreaker in the sea of traffic, clearing the way for Clint’s more clumsy biking attempts.

Tony had a new sign up at the electronics shop that sat on top of his workshop. It read, “Stark Tech: Bringing you the future, NOW”

The interior had gone through a whirlwind remodel. It still had cell phone chargers and iPod adaptors but it also featured a variety of robot construction kits, a section of miniaturized electronics, off-brand high-efficiency chargers, and a sign instructing people to “ask about our surveillance systems!”. The somewhat flighty clerk that always seemed to be there had a new polo shirt with “Stark Tech” and a swoopy swish of a logo embroidered over the breast pocket.

“Someone went up market,” Clint commented to Natasha. She snorted. Their bike stands were still in back, so they unpacked, hung their bikes, and took the elevator down.

“Tony. Coffee.” Natasha was normally quiet but she could make some noise when she wanted to. Natasha set down the carafe and cups, collecting the empty carafe from Friday’s delivery and wrangling the used cups. Clint put out the pecan rolls, the creamer, and a sugar bowl, leaving himself holding the papers awkwardly. “Tony!” Natasha called more sharply.

The click-click of high-heels was entirely out of place in the basement workshop. Natasha and Clint’s heads swiveled in unison towards the noise, eyebrows raising in disbelief. A willowy redhead in pumps that even Clint could identify as expensive walked around a pile of metal. “You are not Tony,” Clint said.

“I’m Pepper Potts - Tony’s marketing director.”

“His what?” Clint asked with more disbelief then he probably should have.

“Also his CFO. He said he could use my design aesthetics with something to do with your business, and I wanted to check on the roll out of the new storefront.” Pepper smiled a calm, welcoming sort of smile as though she was greeting them into her sitting room instead of coming upon them in the bowels of her boss’ secret workshop.

“Natasha Romanoff,” Natasha introduced herself, approaching the other woman to shake hands.

“Clint Barton,” Clint said with a nod, keeping his distance. He felt like he would ruin the woman’s sleek aesthetic were he to touch her.

“Miss Romanoff, Mr. Barton - a pleasure. Do you have any idea what he really needed me for?”

“Your ineffable wisdom, Ms. Potts,” Tony said, rushing down the stairs, skipping steps. He jogged to the coffee carafe and poured a cup, first for Pepper then for himself. Natasha and Clint exchanged a look. That was more courtesy than they had seen Tony exhibit for any other individual ever. “I wanted to get her opinion on your remodel.” Speaking directly to Pepper, “I know you have some contacts in construction—”

“With all the damage you do to your properties I would hope so,” she muttered.

“—and I have a feeling our outlaws will need some supplies in the near run,” Tony finished over her.

“And how would you know that?” Natasha asked dangerously.

Tony shrugged. “I hear things. I keep my ear to the ground. I’m in ‘the know’.” Tony put his fingers up in air quotes.

Pepper put her hands over his fingers and pressed them down firmly, “Please don’t try to be hip.”

“Look, it doesn’t matter how I know.” Tony made a grabby gesture at Clint. “Show me the papers.” Natasha rolled her eyes and nodded permission. Clint handed them over. Pepper looked for a clear place to sit down for a moment, eventually giving up, while Tony looked through the papers. Natasha tore apart a pecan roll, giving half to Clint and picking the rest into bite-sized pieces. Tony hmmed and spread the sheets out over his worktop. “This is actually... not unreasonable.”

Pepper gave them a look that clearly said she was tired of Tony’s cryptic bullshit, and went over to look at the schematics. She hmmed as well. “We’d have to get the property split and the front parcel re-zoned.”

“You’d been wanting that anyways,” Tony dismissed.

“I’d been _wanting_ you to clear the entire contents of an army surplus warehouse out of a multi-million dollar Manhattan property and actually put it to viable use,” she replied sharply. “Not parcel off half of it so you could keep packing away junk the Russians didn’t even want.”

“There’s some good stuff in there,” Tony replied cagily.

“Wait, I always hear shit going on in the back. Are you telling me—” Clint began but stopped at Tony’s sawing-over-his-neck gesture begging Clint to stop. Pepper turned a venomous look on Tony.

“Did you set up a manufacture site without telling me?”

Tony backed up a few steps, raising his hands intending to placate Pepper. They looked more like they were there for defense. “I might have set up a small—”

“You promised not to start any new manufacturing—”

“—line in a property that was otherwise languishing—”

“—until after the new stores started posting—”

“—in order to get some newer products—”

“—profits which covered the tax.” Pepper dropped her head into her hands.

“—out for our opening here,” Tony finished, looking defiant and contrite at the same time.

“Tony,” she said with a note of despair.

“I know I promised and I’m sorry but I’m also not sorry.”

She turned, going from defeated to angry in a split second. “Explain that to me,” she demanded.

Natasha and Clint backed out of the blast radius of the conversation and clumped together for safety. Pepper and Tony seemed to have completely forgotten their presence.

“Well, funny you should ask,” Tony hedged. He looked around as though hoping to see a script attached to an adjacent surface. “I wanted to, okay? It was just a little line. It’s completely automated and Banner keeps an eye on it. The kids didn’t even know it was there. Not really.”

“Excuse me?” Clint asked.

“What did you call us?” Natasha aske, low and dangerous.

Pepper was flushed and angry. In an amazing show of self-control she reined in what was set to be a shouting match, possibly including throwing things, and turned to Tony with a cold look. “We’ll discuss this later, Tony.” She turned to Clint and Natasha with a polite smile, “Let’s assume the property is approved for everything. Let’s talk design.” Even Clint, who often thought of himself as emotionally tone-deaf, could see the bright spark of hurt in Pepper’s expression.

Tony spent the meeting shooting wary looks at Pepper and was almost meek in his over-the-top suggestions for the bay’s remodel. Pepper firmly ignored Tony and made some valuable suggestions. They left with a few huge rolls of schematics drawn on butcher paper by Tony with Pepper’s neat cursive outlining details. As the elevator doors began to close behind them, Clint could feel the tension in the garage ratchet back to hurricane force, and as they left the shop they could hear the echoes of the shouting going on in the basement.

\--

Thursday dawned too early for Clint’s liking. Natasha was gone, running, in what he thought of as an intensely ill-advised exercise routine. She apparently thought of it as bare-minimum maintenance. When she returned she would engage in a strange set of rituals involving very heavy iron weights on handles swinging about the apartment in deadly, archaic arcs. Clint indulged in rolling back and forth in the top bunk and then sprawling half over the guardrail, letting the breeze from their open window play over his skin.

He flopped farther out of bed over the rail, until his face was flushed red with blood and he felt a little woozy from being upside down. Clint fiddled around to find the slats under his bed, and in a move he practiced probably more than he should for the structural stability of the bed, hitched his hips over the guardrail, somersaulted forward and caught himself in a half-pull-up on the bed slats. Clint cracked a little grin; he still had it.

He showered for what felt like hours and lingered over his coffee and protein shake, staring out the window at passing traffic. Natasha went through her iron-swinging ritual and showered, changing into nicer-than-normal clothes. “We have to leave soon,” she told him, brewing a cup of tea.

“I know.”

“You should probably not be wearing pyjama pants.”

Clint fussed over what to wear. He had met with Coulson in his work clothes - jeans and a t-shirt with their usual logo on the front. Maybe he should wear his button-down, he mused. Slacks? Not slacks? The options were slacks, jeans, or cargo pants that went out of style ten years previous. Slacks it was.

By the time he had put on his button-down over a purple t-shirt, Natasha had her sunglasses on and was looking pointedly at him, holding out his boots.

They nearly forgot the plans Tony had helped draw up.

“I kind of feel like we’re in a spy movie,” Clint confessed. Natasha rolled her eyes at him and was silent through the walk to Madison Square Park. Natasha had a weird obsession with public places and escape routes that Clint didn’t get but was happy to respect. They arrived early and commandeered two tables from the as-yet-unopened Shake Shack and Natasha picked her rickety chair and angled it so Phil would be sitting with the sun in his eyes. She shook her hair back from her face and under her huge, dark sunglasses Clint saw the telltale purpling under the edge of her frames.

“Oh my god, Nat, do you have a black eye?” With the amount of time they worked together they hardly needed to glance at one another to gauge mood, direction of movement, or the allocation of duties. He hadn’t given her a once-over since she’d gotten in late the last night. He swept his eyes over her, stopping at her bruised knuckles, an abrasion only partially covered by the three-quarter length sleeves of her blouse, an angry bruise around her left wrist that looked like it had been made by another hand.

Clint stood and glared down at her. “What?” she asked, nonplussed.

“Stand up, Nat.” She saw something in his eyes that discomforted her. She stood obligingly. The hem of her pencil skirt hid all but the leading edge of a bruise. Without thinking about how it would look, he pushed up the hem of her skirt. The bruise was dark, dark blue, fresh and horrible. “What the fuck? This- who did this to you?” It looked like she’d received several blows in succession on her thigh.

She went from bored and slightly amused to a cold, icy disdain in a flash. “I’m fine, Clint.”

“No, you’re not. Someone’s beating the shit out of you. You need to tell me who.”

“No, Clint, I do not.” She bit off the words.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Phil said, walking up and setting his fucking attache on a chair. Clint realized rather abruptly that he had his hand up Natasha’s skirt and was yelling at her in a public park. He dropped his hand feeling chastened and immature. Natasha gave a shimmy and her skirt fell back into place.

“Not at all,” she replied, all professional charm. “I’m Natasha Romanoff.” She held out a hand to shake.

“Phil Coulson. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Natasha slanted a look at Clint which melted from its arctic fury just a smidge. “Likewise.” They shook hands and sat. Clint scrambled from the half-kneel he was in to sit with them. He felt like a child who had gotten seated at the adult’s table by mistake.

“I am gratified that you chose to meet with me.”

“Clint,” she said, making it sound more like ‘my idiot partner’ “made a compelling case for you. I appreciate your willingness to help with our... little problem.”

Phil nodded once, accepting the gratitude. Clint shuffled papers loudly. Phil coughed and hid a smirk behind his hand. “So Ms. Romanoff - have you been in the food service industry long?”

Natasha shook her head. “Only since I invested in Clint’s truck. I was a bike messenger before that.”

Clint frowned, but kept his mouth shut. Natasha learned to bake somewhere. There were home cooks and then there was what Natasha did, wading effortlessly into Sysco bags of flour delivered off of a panel truck. The baked goods she made were as regular as what would come from a bakery and produced in commercial quantities. He had always assumed she grew up in a bakery or had been apprenticed in one when she was a teenager but her words cast mystery onto the situation.

“Clint?” Phil enquired mildly. Natasha shot him a warning look. Clint shook his head innocently. Phil glanced between them thoughtfully. “I don’t mean to pry, but if you have previous experience that might make things simpler. Clint told me you did most of the baking; where did you learn to do that?”

Natasha shot Clint a look as though this was all his fault and he would be held responsible when she got him alone next. “I’d prefer not to say.”

Phil held eye contact with Natasha, impassive but with an undercurrent of kindness. She stared obstinately back. “Ms. Romanoff, I assure you, if there are details you would rather remain private I can respect that. Given the nature of our future relationship, though, I need to know everything. If you sold sandwiches out of the back of a hatchback or baked for Hostess, I need to know.”

Natasha shook her head as though in disbelief or disgust. “Come on, Nat. You learned to bake somewhere. It wasn’t like you, I don’t know, baked for the Godfather or something.” A frisson of tension went down Natasha’s body. Phil probably didn’t notice it, but from living in each other’s pockets for so many months, Clint recognized the motion. “Fucking Christ, Nat, was it the mob?”

Phil’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “We are not talking about this,” she told him calmly.

They sat in an uncomfortable mexican standoff, Tony’s schematics flapping gently in a spring breeze.

“I can promise you complete discretion,” Phil said at last. “I’ll give it to you in writing if you would prefer.”

Clint reached out and placed his hand over hers. “I trust him.”

And the thing was, Phil looked so damned trustworthy at that moment that Clint would have sat docile while the other man held a knife to his throat. Phil exuded calm and reliability and ‘I can handle this’ with such an effortless self-assurance that Clint felt he might drown in it.

“My parents immigrated from the USSR when I was three. I don’t know if it was legal or not, but I think my father was an intellectual and they were fleeing... something.” Natasha shrugged one shoulder as though her parents fleeing across the world during her formative years was no big deal. “They died.”

“How old were you?” Clint asked, squeezing her hand.

She shrugged. “I don’t remember. Young. Probably six. I had learned English pretty well by that point but I wasn’t in school yet.” It was as though she was reading the report of someone else’s life, flatly unemotional. “A man came by and told me he was my uncle; he put me with some of his people in Brooklyn. They ran a bakery.”

“So you grew up in it?” Phil surmised.

Natasha frowned in condescension as though Phil was very cute. “That’s one way to put it.”

“How would you put it?” Phil asked, honestly curious and without judgement.

“I didn’t go to school. I worked. They demanded high standards and if I didn’t meet them I was punished. They told me this was how life was and I believed them for a long time.”

“Were you human trafficked?” Clint asked, voice rising at the end of his question in disbelief and outrage. “I thought that shit only happened in Denzel Washington movies nowadays.”

“It’s actually distressingly common,” Phil said his expression communicating genuine distress.

Natasha raised an eyebrow as though asking ‘are you gentlemen done?’ “There were many girls who worked there though none lasted so long as me. Some got sick and disappeared. Others,” she shrugged, “I don’t know. I learned the quickest. I was the strongest. I think they liked me in their own way, or were at least proud of what they made of me.”

Clint felt ill. This was not how this morning was supposed to go. The revelations about Natasha’s background tilted his whole world view. Well, sure, he’d had a shitty early life, but at least he hadn’t been sold into slavery by an evil uncle.

“How did you get out?” Coulson asked bluntly.

“I stole the delivery bike and ran. I lived on the street for a while before I figured out I could make money as a bike messenger. I ran into their people a few times before I moved across the river and then to Queens. I convinced them I wasn’t worth bringing back.”

“And how did you do that?” Coulson asked.

“Violently,” she responded. There was an animal gleam in Natasha’s eyes that Clint had never seen before, and he well believed she could do some damage to any person who tried to contain her against her will.

“Did you ever go to school? Do you know if there are records of your residency?” Phil asked kindly.

Natasha shook her head. 

Phil frowned. “I have a few friends in... positions such that they could look into this for you, if you’d be willing to get me what information you have. I’m sure they’d be interested in this bakery and any of its associates as well.”

“I’ll consider it,” Natasha allowed. “I have a social security number that should come back clean regardless. I just... I’m not sure how good it is,” she admitted finally.

“Why don’t we keep that as a plan B? My people are discreet; even if the news is bad it won’t come back to you.” Natasha looked doubtful but nodded. “Now let’s look at those specs.”

\--

Clint left the meeting almost giddy with how well it went. He talked all the way to the subway platform and two stops down the line before he realized Natasha wasn’t responding. In fact, she wasn’t looking at him, or acknowledging him in any way. It was as though he didn’t exist. Considering the engaged, cordial manner in which she had been conducting herself just minutes before, it was a stark contrast.

“Tash?” he asked, trying to look in her face. She turned her head and leaned it against the handrail as though she was tired. “Nat?” She closed her eyes. “Natasha, what is it?” She completely ignored him all the way back to their stop and during the walk to their apartment. She unlocked the front door and didn’t hold it for him and shouldered her way into the apartment when he tried to block her way. She didn’t lock him out, and he felt as though he should count himself lucky for that fact. She changed quickly out of her nice clothes and into something shapeless and soft and left.

Clint sat on the futon. He had done something. He knew he had done something. If he could only work out which something had resulted in such a strong reaction from Natasha. In truth there were a half-dozen things over the last few days that could have, in concert, provoked the reaction.

He made coffee, on automatic, and sat with it as it cooled. He had trampled over some of Natasha’s personal boundaries in what he realized on reflection was a willful and thoughtless manner. By unspoken agreement, they largely didn’t discuss their childhoods or even their not-so-recent pasts. The expanse of time stretching back from before she was a bike messenger had been a vast dark swath of suppositions and guesses on his part, and Natasha had swaddled herself in that uncertainty to save herself from his pity. Likewise, he didn’t talk about what was a truly broken childhood or the supremely unhealthy relationship with his brother which had lasted until just recently.

He felt both close and equal to Natasha, and that was a first. There were times when they disagreed, but in general one would take the lead and the other would follow, as best suited their strengths and weaknesses. Natasha would keep his secrets and generally keeping hers was effortless. Except for today.

He’d been playing to Phil - trying to impress him or get his attention maybe? Clint played back the meeting. It had all started badly with him getting handsy over Natasha’s injuries and then been a parade of bad and worse. He should have known to keep his mouth shut and he shouldn’t have pushed. He’d been thrown off with worrying over her getting hurt and he hadn’t been aware enough to realize he was hurting her by forcing out her secrets. No wonder she was pissed off.

Clint tried his coffee but it was cold and ashy bitter. He dumped it down the sink and made a sandwich instead. Natasha still wasn’t back. The feeling of her displeasure and unhappiness itched under his skin like poison oak. The balm of an apology was just out of reach and that much more distressing for being so close.

He pulled out his phone and texted her.

_I’m sorry. Can we talk?_

The stretch of silence he got back on his own phone grew painfully taut. 

He had never been so grateful to hear a key turning in a lock. Natasha’s hair was disheveled and she’d pulled her sleeves over her thumbs as though she was cold. Her eyes narrowed at him - her first acknowledgement of his existence - and she turned her back on him in order to shower. The look she had leveled at him was hurt and anger and fear all rolled together, and that stabbed an unarmored place deep in his heart. He wasn’t supposed to make her feel like that; that was anybody other than him.

He made tea and a sandwich for her while the shower ran. She showered so long the tea went cold. He made another cup so it would be hot. She emerged from the shower wearing one of his t-shirts and a pair of his boxers. They had kind of been hers too at one point so he couldn’t fault her for stealing them back. He couldn’t fault her for much at the moment. She glanced at him and sat at the table, claiming the sandwich as though he might argue with her over ownership.

He gave her space. That’s what this was about - giving her the space and the opportunity to control her secrets. She sat with her tea for a few minutes, staring off into the middle distance, before turning to him. The weight of her contemplation was like lead.

He sensed it was his moment. “Natasha, I’m sorry.” He put all the feeling that was whirring out of control in his middle into the words. “About this afternoon, I’m sorry.”

She tilted her head and looked at him as though he was a particularly perplexing piece of alien fauna. “I know you’re a grown woman and you can take care of yourself and I shouldn’t have gotten handsy in the park. So I’m sorry for that. And I shouldn’t have pushed about your past, especially with Phil there. It was a dick move and I’m sorry.” She was still staring at him impassively. And the stupid just starting spilling from his lips. “But Phil needed to know that stuff to help us out—”

“But nothing,” Natasha hissed, bringing Clint up short. “But nothing, Clint.”

There was a sheen of unshed tears in her eyes, and abruptly Clint felt ashamed. “That wasn’t— you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m—” He’d stood without noticing and approached her, arms open. A fraction of a second of mistrust flashed over her expression, and it hurt more than anything he could remember, and then she rose and tucked herself in his embrace.

He ended up on the floor, leaning against the wall with Natasha tucked under his chin. “I’m sorry that all that stuff happened to you and I’m sorry I was a dick about it and I’m sorry I made you—”

“Shh.” She shushed him and squeezed him tighter and he took the hint.

He kissed her hair. “I was worried about you, Nat. Where did you go?”

She shook her head against his chest. Her grip loosened around him after a while and she sat up. Her eyes were red and there was a wet patch on his shirt. He kissed her forehead and wiped her eyes with his thumbs. “I’m sorry and I won’t do it again.”

She nodded solemnly. They sat silent for long minutes, the whirr of traffic outside their window the only indication of time’s passage.

She sniffed once and pulled herself together. “So when are we going to talk about you and _Phil_?” she asked, mischievous.

“There is no ‘me and Phil’,” Clint protested.

“Not yet,” she agreed, “but I saw those bedroom eyes he was throwing at you.”

“Bedroom eyes?” Clint reared back from her face to scrutinize her for traces of mockery.

“They were more like, ‘I’d like to sign a contract to adore and respect you’ eyes, but I think that’s what they mean on the Suit.”

“No, this thing - it’s just a crush. And it’s a terrible idea. And you must be confused.”

“How often have I been wrong about things like this?”

Clint frowned. Natasha did have an uncanny track record when it came to reading people. “He was just being polite.”

Natasha scoffed, wiping her eyes in a decisive gesture. “Polite would be what he was with me. Fawning over your biceps is what he was doing with you.” Clint unconsciously flexed his biceps. Feeling the movement, Natasha laughed, and Clint knew everything would be alright between them. “Believe me, I know when a man is interested and trying not to show it. You should make a move before someone else hits that mark.”

\--

“How’s the stray rescue going?” Sitwell asked when Coulson returned to his office.

Coulson raised his eyebrows in mild reproof. “I think we’ve come to a mutually beneficial agreement regarding modes of action.”

“Is that what you’re calling it these days?”

“Are you implying something, Jasper?” Coulson asked, perhaps more harshly than he should have. He’d had the sun in his eyes all through the meeting and it had resulted in a blooming migraine.

“Just that you wouldn’t be working on your lunches and days off with these people if you didn’t have a soft spot for the coffee hottie.”

“His name is Clint,” Coulson bit out, “and I give just as much commitment to each of my projects. I don’t appreciate you implying otherwise, or that my relations are less than professional.”

Sitwell handed him a bottle of Excedrin and a cup of the office’s paint-stripper coffee with a raised eyebrow. Coulson took both and downed some pills with a caffeine chaser. Coulson swiped a hand down his face and pushed his hair back into place. He _was_ feeling too emotionally invested and that was the kicker.

A lot of anxiety and generalized stress had been wrapped up in meeting Natasha, what with the regard Clint obviously held her in, and the position she held as linchpin of the entire venture with the truck. Her guarded manner and frankly bizarre personal story hadn’t helped ease the feelings at all. He’d be checking into it with some contacts to see if it was at all legitimate or if she was leading him on a merry chase, tugging at his heartstrings in an attempted manipulation. Clint’s reaction had been genuine distress, his emotional involvement causing obvious friction between the partners. Unless she suffered from a pathological condition, which wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility, Phil tended towards believing her. That left a lot of questions and a looming feeling of ownership and responsibility towards the unlikely pair, which muddled together with an uncomfortable feeling of giddy attraction that he couldn’t remember feeling since high school.

Sitwell moved closer to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?” Sitwell and Coulson had started in the agency together several years prior. Sitwell could be a sarcastic bastard, harsh, biting, flippant, and demanding. But he was always there when Phil needed a hand, or perspective, or a kick in the ass. Sitwell was the slightly more lax side to his hidebound coin, and they had developed a sensitive working relationship over the years which few outside their department could fathom.

Coulson sighed. “No, I’m not.” He related the bare-bones of Natasha’s story.

“And you think she’s legit?” Sitwell asked. Phil nodded despondently. “That’s heavy.” Phil nodded in agreement.

“How is it you always get the special needs cases with all these crazy problems that need, like, inter-agency co-operation between six departments to get them fixed?”

“I really don’t know.” They pondered the issues in silence.

“So what painfully adorable thing did coffee hottie Clint do today?” Sitwell asked, effortlessly shifting from commiserating co-worker to office gossip.

Coulson smiled, thinking back on Clint sitting in the dappled shade, hair soft and messy, posture attentively bent towards his partner in an effort to offer support. He was so screwed.  
\--


	5. Chapter 5

A week went by without much tangible progress on the truck or the bay. Clint knew that Tony, Pepper, and Phil were involved in some sort of zoning menage a trois. He only knew this because Tony occasionally texted him cryptic photos of piles of paperwork with captions like ‘send help now’ or ‘cookies?’. Clint was contemplating the merits of Coney Island versus napping in the park on his day off when Natasha caught him.

“We’re baking today,” she told him.

“Sunday is our baking day. We bake on Sunday. It’s Thursday. The day we don’t do anything.”

“Sunday is Easter. We’re taking Sunday off and going to Bucky and Steve’s. We need to bake Easter cakes today so we can sell them tomorrow and Saturday.”

That... made sense. “Except how we’re a coffee truck, not a Christian bakery. Are you even religious?”

“It’s tradition.” Natasha threw his jacket at him.

Natasha was an ambitious, perfectionist baker, but for the holiday she stuck to tradition. Little creamy trifles laced with dried fruit that Natasha told him were Russian Easter fare would be their day sales items and plates of hot cross buns would be sold, still rising, for baking at home.

“How did you buy yeast that takes two days to rise? It has to be like, the laziest yeast ever.” Clint had formed hundreds of hot cross buns, pathetically small and sunken looking since they weren’t rising as quickly as he was used to.

“It’s not lazy. It’s biding its time. When the moment comes, they will be ready.”

“You’re making these guys sound like dough-commandos.”

Natasha sucked her fingers clean of dough in a thoughtful manner and shrugged. She tasted the cream trifle batter and, apparently satisfied, began pouring it into little cupcake liners. 

Clint switched out trays for Natasha, stashing the already-poured trifles in the fridge to set. “What are these called, anyways? I don’t think you’ve made these before.”

Natasha side-eyed him. “They’re called pashkas.”

Clint frowned. “Have you been calling me a little fruitcake this whole time?”

“A closer translation would be ‘cheesecake’ but yes.”

“Is this a Russian thing or a Natasha thing?” Clint asked, staring at the center of a pashka. A single bright green pistachio shard floated in the mixture.

“Take your pick.”

They were finished and cleaned up in a few more hours but Tony called asking about some part of their remodeling schematics and they ended up staying later than they had anticipated, walking around the small space with Tony while he outlined his vision.

They got in late the next day, skipping their normal morning routine, and headed out late to a brewing coffee cloud in Midtown. Clint texted Phil as they were rolling out.

_Wil b @ mrry hl - Mad n 34th 1400_

Phil texted back a few minutes later.

_Sloppy work - calling the fuzz to let them know where you’ll be. Your texting is atrocious._

Phil sidled up to the truck during a lull in the wash of customers. Natasha tapped Clint and went to futz with their stock of hot cross buns. “Hey,” Clint said, feeling rather goofy.

Phil smiled up at him. “I see you’re prepared for Easter,” Phil replied, nodding his head towards the bunnies-and-eggs theme on the truck. The bunnies had little domino masks and were hopping away from frogs dressed as police. One day Clint would have to find out who was designing their themes.

Clint grinned. “Specials on pashkas today. What can I get you to drink?”

“Black coffee. And a pashka, since I hear they’re special.” Phil winked at him and Clint felt himself start to blush. To save himself the embarrassment, he turned to get the coffee. Natasha was already holding out Phil’s order along with a plate of rising hot cross buns to Clint. He frowned in confusion. Natasha raised a significant eyebrow and gestured towards Phil, as though she thought Clint was very dense.

Clint handed over the coffee and pashka and kept a hold of the buns. Phil sipped the coffee and peeled back the cupcake liner to take a bite of the pashka. He made a humming groan of pleasure. Clint imagined what that sound would feel like if his hand were pressed against Phil’s chest, the rumble of enjoyment translating through his palm and fingertips. Phil leaned against the truck, disinclined to move. The afternoon sun was kind to him and seemed to soften the hard lines of his suit.

“So, uh,” Clint began, throat feeling dry, “do you have any Easter plans?”

Phil nodded, “I’ll go to my sister’s - she’s in Jersey. My brother is doing duty with my mother in Chicago this year. I’ll probably get Christmas if Julie doesn’t want to travel with the nieces.”

“That sounds... nice.” Clint couldn’t really imagine what a holiday with a whole mess of family was like. Barney had never been that interested in holidays and Clint had never felt he was properly trained in how to celebrate the things.

“What about you? Big plans?” Phil asked.

“Yeah,” Clint frowned, “we’re doing lunch with some friends.”

“I’m glad you have somewhere to go,” Phil said, and damn but he sounded like he meant it. Natasha elbowed him as she bustled by. Phil had finished his pashka and licked his fingers clean and Clint should not be thinking dirty thoughts about one of the few people who had ever fallen into his life and seemed to altruistically, genuinely want to help him. Natasha’s pointed elbow brought back their conversation from a few days previous about how maybe his mooning wasn’t entirely one-sided.

Clint stuck the hot cross bun plate out the window and waved it at Phil. “You should take these to your sister’s. They’ll be ready Sunday morning. On the house,” Clint added when Phil started reaching towards his wallet.

“Thank you.” Phil looked at the sunken little dough balls with fondness.

“375 for 15 minutes and squirt on the little crosses with the frosting bag,” Clint recited the directions by rote.

Phil stared down at the buns for longer than seemed normal. He looked up at Clint, a hint of apprehension in eyes normally unclouded by doubt or insecurity. He took a breath and let it out harshly as though girding himself, and Clint felt a flash of heat - panic and anticipation and excitement all rolled into one dizzying emotion. “This might...” Phil began, “I understand that you’re probably busy, but— and if you think it’s inappropriate I completely understand, but—”

“Do you want to go out sometime, like, on a date?” Clint interrupted.

The smile that broke out on Phil’s face was the sun breaking through the clouds after a thunderstorm. “You took the words out of my mouth.”

“Yeah, well, you were taking so long to spit them out,” Clint rationalized.

“I would very much like to go on a date some time; perhaps next Thursday evening?” Phil suggested. And of course he had figured out their scheduling and remembered it from the off-handed comments made between Clint and Natasha.

Clint felt a little sick with excitement, but nodded. “Yeah, sounds great.”

As Phil walked back towards his office, Clint noticed there was a tiny skip to his step. Clint was so done for.

\--

Clint wasn’t what he’d call Christian. Foster homes and later the circus had carried an occult sort of religiosity, but never in a way that was formalized beyond a celebration of the fat red man and Christmas trees. Easter was a celebration that winter was probably over for real, and was usually marked by consuming way too many egg-shaped malt balls and marshmallow peeps.

For Natasha, it apparently involved a lot of baking. She spent Saturday night making a few toweringly tall kulichs to go with a monstrous pashka that she intended to bring to Bucky and Steve’s. Sunday morning he woke to noxious smells coming from the kitchen as Natasha blew and dyed eggs with intricate patterns and colorless wax. 

The miniature masterpieces were obviously personalized; Clint’s was shades of royal purple with a coffee cup on one side and a bow and arrow on the other in swirling dot motifs. Natasha’s was dark with a red hourglass and a rolling pin. Steve’s was a red, white, and blue flag motif, and Bucky’s was a red star on a dark background, eerily reminiscent of Natasha’s own egg.

They spent the subway ride to Brooklyn spitballing over how they’d like the kitchen set up when the new walls were put in their bay. Bucky and Steve’s place was a fourth floor walkup in a quiet neighborhood. It was old but clean with some obvious tenant-performed repairs. 

There were a ridiculous number of photos around the place framed in various configurations. Army photos from before Steve had mustered out and Bucky had lost his arm, photos from when Bucky and Steve were kids, scrawny and big-eyed with a hungry look Clint was familiar with. There were pictures of Steve and a gorgeous, determined-looking brunette and pictures of Bucky with a woman who could have been his sister. There was one portrait in an old style of a woman that was someone’s mother, and an etching of St. Francis over the mantle.

The place gave the feeling of another era between the lack of television and the worn furniture. Existing in the home of a pair of Ex-Army boys meant each piece had been mended or put back together at some point. And the place smelled _amazing_.

Clint’s stomach grumbled approvingly almost before the door was opened.

Steve had a flower-print apron on which he somehow made look like an avant-garde wardrobe choice instead of something patently ridiculous on his all-American-soldier frame. “It’s them,” he shouted over his shoulder. Bucky poked his head from the kitchen with a lopsided grin.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Bucky said, eyes only for Natasha. She held out a bottle in a paper bag which Clint had somehow not noticed on the ride over, and set the pashka on a bit of free counter space.

Clint handed off the kulich and a basket containing the blown eggs.

“Can I give you a hand with anything?” Clint offered.

Bucky waved an oven mitt at Clint, “Give him the tour, Steve. Keep him out of my hair.”

Steve laughed and gestured for Clint to follow him. Clint tried to grab Natasha but she shook her head, hitching her hip against the kitchen counter with a familiar ease. Clint frowned. “Tash, have you been here before?” he asked in an undertone. She raised an eyebrow that said ‘I can neither confirm nor deny’ and reached in the fridge for a beer.

The entire apartment consisted of a bedroom, a living room, the kitchen, a bathroom, and a tiny fire escape stuffed full of illegal quantities of plant life. The bedroom had two single beds in it and was spartan and immaculate. Clint was sure under the comforters were hospital corners on the sheets. The bathroom had a little character; notes were jammed in the frame of the mirror along with hand-drawn cartoons in a style Clint found strangely familiar.

“One of you guys draw?” Clint asked, peering at one of Bucky before he lost his arm and another man in an Army uniform with a ridiculous push-broom mustache quarreling over something, little scribbles of disagreement filling the thought bubbles over their heads.

Steve blushed. “That would be me.” He rubbed the back of his head shyly. “I did some of the art for your truck, too. Tony asked—”

“Holy shit, that’s you? That’s— we’re always getting compliments on your stuff. It’s like, painfully cute.”

Steve blushed a tomato red. “Thanks, I—”

“Seriously. I was just thinking the other day I’d have to find out who was doing our art and buy the guy a beer. You could totally do that professionally.”

“I really just doodle,” Steve said, turning away.

Bucky jumped on Steve’s back, thighs wrapping around his middle and stump bracing across his throat so Bucky could execute a one-handed noogie. Steve oof’ed in surprise but braced to stand up to the treatment. “Stevie is too damned modest. He could be an artiste.” Bucky jumped off his friend and kissed his head in a familiar gesture. “Ham’s done. Chow time,” Bucky added.

Steve smiled fondly after Bucky, the expression faltering momentarily when he noticed Clint was looking.

Every surface of the kitchen was covered in food. A ham dominated the card table which had place settings ready for each of them. Potatoes, deviled eggs, a massive salad, buttered peas and Natasha’s desserts rounded out the spread. Natasha pulled her bottle from the freezer and poured frosty aperitif glasses of vodka for everyone. It was the first family meal like this Clint could remember in his adult life.

Clint almost started digging in as soon as they were seated, but a sharp warning look from Natasha had him pausing. Steve reached out a hand as did Natasha and okay, they were doing a prayer circle thing. Steve completed the circle by clapping Bucky on the shoulder and bent his head. Clint followed suit.

“Thank you for this meal and a beautiful spring. Thank you for the health of old friends and for the presence of new ones.” Clint felt a squeeze of the hand in Steve’s. “I’m reminded every day of what a blessing it is to be here, alive and well. Amen.”

“A-fucking-men,” Bucky added, downing his shot of vodka in unison with Natasha. Clint followed suit, eyes watering with the power of vodka that had no English on the label.

A culinary free-for-all ensued. Steve and Bucky could each individually have out-eaten Clint and Natasha combined. “Oh my god this ham is amazing,” Clint said through a mouthful. He felt guilty talking with his mouth full as soon as he glanced at perfect-table-manners Steve.

Natasha peeled a crispy piece of fat off the outside of the roast and chewed on it, lips slicked with fat. “Bucky does all the cooking,” Steve said, sheepishly. “I’m really hopeless in the kitchen. I lived mostly on canned chicken and takeout before he got back.”

“The lug was wasting away without me. It was like some kinda Victorian romance.” 

Clint gave up matching Bucky and Natasha shot for shot at around the fourth one when he was warm and fuzzy but not dangerously drunk. They seemed alarmingly unaffected. Steve rolled his eyes at the pair, turning to Clint. “I don’t suppose you play bridge?”

“I’m more of a poker kind of guy,” Clint replied

“Don’t say that around this snake,” Natasha said, slanting a suspicious look at Bucky. “He’ll take you for a ride and we’ll end up owing him the truck.”

“How about gin?” Steve asked, apparently with a vested interest in keeping Bucky from gambling their guests into the poor house.

\--

Thursday approached and a niggling feeling of anxious anticipation turned into full-blown distracting butterflies flapping around in Clint’s stomach. Phil had rather shyly (completely adorably) offered to cook at his place and yeah, it was a big deal kind of first date but it wasn’t like they were _strangers_.

Natasha dragged him on her morning run to distract him, and then put a movie on for him like he was a child while she went to do mysterious Natasha things. He was glad she knew him so well, and didn’t judge on Disney movies; Robin Hood always cheered him up. He was half-way through Mulan when Natasha returned with a bag of clothes and a bottle of wine.

“What’s going on, Natasha?” Clint asked, suddenly wary.

“You were obviously unprepared for your date.”

“I think I’m over prepared,” Clint countered. “I think I’m freaking out.” Natasha ruffled his hair. “I think I really like this guy, you know?”

Natasha nodded silently. “You needed clothes.” She dropped her bag on his lap. “You might want to hang those up.”

There was a dark blue shirt with a bit of a purple sheen to it that somehow avoided being tacky. She’d gotten him a pair of grey slacks in a soft wool to match, and a lilac tie with a soothing pattern. It was the nicest outfit that Clint had ever owned, and probably in better taste than anything he’d bought for himself. She leaned her head against his shoulder, admiring the play of light over the fibres of the shirt. “You shouldn’ta done this, Tash,” he said quietly. “You didn’t need to do this.”

She rubbed her cheek on his shoulder. “You deserve it. Besides, I know a guy.”

\--

Clint showed up at Phil’s address, miraculously on time, in the outfit Natasha had gotten for him, and with her bottle of wine. He’d read the label several times on the way over, a Syrah from somewhere in Australia. He didn’t know what that meant aside from it was red, and the label said it was tannic, fruity, and with a clean finish. Clint also was unsure how that would translate to taste, but he was willing to trust Natasha.

Phil had a doormat that said “Welcome Friends”. He lived in an adorable four-family condo. Clint felt the feeling that Phil was much too good for a guy like him rise once more to curl about his heart and constrict his lungs. He’d already rang the doorbell though; his fate was sealed.

Phil answered the door in a soft v-neck sweater and glasses, as though he’d been called away from reading something. His smile was beatific, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and he opened the door wide. Phil’s smile gave a little judder as his eyes ran up and down the length of Clint in a split-second appraisal. Clint felt the constriction of shame and rejection wrap around his throat, but Phil frowned. “Now that’s just not fair,” he muttered, staring at Clint’s knotted tie and swallowing. He realized that was the barest hint of what lust might look like on Phil.

“I brought wine.” Clint thrust the bottle in front of himself, and that seemed to bring Phil back in the moment.

“You didn’t have to,” Phil said, accepting the bottle with a tut. “Please come in.”

The house smelled wonderful. Clint was momentarily overwhelmed by the scents of cumin and turmeric, browned onions and ginger. The smell only got stronger as he walked up the stairs into the apartment proper. The living room, dining room and kitchen were one open space floored in dark, polished wood with cream-colored walls. The living room area was lined with bookshelves and had a comfortable couch and a coffee table with issues of _Bon Appetit_ and _Cook’s Illustrated_ splayed over it as though Phil had dropped them mid-read and never come back. A wingback chair with a Phil-shaped indentation in the seat and a secretary desk made up a recessed study/office area.

Phil popped the wine and poured it through an aerator a few times, handing Clint a glass when he was done with it. Clint sniffed it and took a sip. Phil was swirling his glass and staring at the wine as it washed down the side of the glass. Clint watched Phil watching the wine. At long last, Phil brought the glass to his lips and stopped, meeting Clint’s eye looking almost embarrassed.

“Sorry,” Phil began, pulling the glass from his lips. “I don’t actually know much about wine. I just took a class actually and—”

“No, I was—” _just watching your lips_ Clint’s mind filled in, or, _enjoying watching you_ or the real gem, _wishing I was that glass of wine_. Clint’s words stopped. “Go on. I don’t know anything about wine either. Natasha picked it for me,” Clint admitted. With the words, a little bit of tension leached out of Phil and he grinned. “I think I can really taste the leather and spice it says is in here, though.”

Phil swirled the glass again, less self-consciously, and took a sip. “I would tend to agree. I’m getting some plum and cherry as well.” Clint sipped again and nodded.

They continued for a few minutes trying to identify all the flavors the label claimed they would discern. Phil set down his glass, a third gone, and put out a dip and crackers. “You really went all out, man.” The dip had olives and maybe beans or something. He didn’t know - it was salty and delicious.

Phil grinned, a cracker halfway to his mouth, and ducked his head as though embarrassed. “Not so much,” he demurred. “They say living in New York you either become obsessed with cooking or your kitchen never sees anything other than takeout.”

“Our place definitely towards the latter,” Clint admitted, “Though I could get used to a place that smells like this more often than not.”

“I don’t know. The truck has a pretty wonderful aroma to it.” An alarm went off and Phil jerked to attention. “Sorry - I should check on that.” He pulled a kitchen rag off the oven door, absentmindedly slinging it over his left shoulder, and pulled a lid off a steaming pot. Aside from that, a sapphire blue conical... thing... was the only item on the stove. It had a broad base and came to a point like a crazy party hat.

“Can I help with anything?” Clint offered belatedly.

“No, it’s almost done. It should just be a minute.” Phil drained the pot in his hand, sprinkling the contents with oil and giving it a practiced shake.

“So what are we having?” Clint asked, trying to make conversation as much as he was curious.

“Lamb tagine, Israeli couscous, salad and dessert.”

“I’ve had the dessert and salad before.” Phil spared a glance from his food to smile at Clint. He seemed charmed by Clint’s lack of experience instead of disheartened.

“I hope you like it then.” Phil pulled the lid off the funky pointy-hat thing on the stove and the most wonderful smells poured out. Clint’s stomach rumbled.

The food was as good as the scents promised. The lamb was tender in a rich, thick sauce. Jewel-toned chunks of apricot and swollen raisins nudged against onions and cashews in the sauce, sweet counterpoints to tart slivers of preserved lemon. The salad even had an exotic air, sprinkled with lemon juice and a spice powder Clint couldn’t identify. They each had a second glass of wine with dinner, and shared the stories of how they moved to New York. That was one story involving his brother which wasn’t too painful at least, Clint thought ruefully.

“So where did you grow up?” Phil asked when they had moved to the couch, the dishes abandoned in the sink with a plate of sweets between them.

“I was born in Iowa,” Clint replied cagily. “What about you?”

“Chicago. I guess that makes us both Midwestern boys.”

“I guess so. I moved around a lot so I’m not sure how much Midwest stuck.” Phil nodded as though that made sense and miraculously didn’t push. He left the option open if Clint felt like talking about it but... he seemed happy with what Clint had to give.

Phil’s sweater looked really soft. It looked like the sort of soft made from baby lambs and exotic alpacas. It wasn’t so far to reach; Clint stretched out his work-calloused fingertips to stroke down the soft fabric on Phil’s arm. Phil moved into it, scooting closer on the couch. Phil reached towards his face. “May I?” he asked, soft and sure.

Clint didn’t know what he was agreeing to but a yes slipped out of his lips. Phil’s hand was gentle as though he was calming a wild animal. He placed it on Clint’s jaw and ran it back until his fingertips were running through the short hair at the nape of his neck. Clint gripped Phil’s forearm, strength wrapped in softness and pulled him in, rising to a kiss.

It had been building but the contact happened like an electric shock. Phil hummed a sound of agreement and pleasure, and he tasted of nuts and caramel and he smelled of exotic spices. Clint inhaled greedily taking in the musky undercurrent that was Phil alone and deepening the kiss. The hand in Clint’s hair tightened, blunt nails scraping over his scalp. Phil pulled back, drawing in a long breath.

Clint smiled crookedly. “Mr. Barton,” Phil said, “I hope you don’t expect me to put out on our first date.” Clint went abruptly red and Phil backpedaled. “I meant that as a joke, not a condemnation. Or mockery.”

Phil gently tilted Clint’s head up from where he’d tucked it. Clint had a bit of a wicked grin. “I wouldn’t expect you to put out, but I wouldn’t hold it against you if you did.”  
\--


	6. Chapter 6

The first time Clint’s phone rang, he checked the screen, saw it was Tony, and hit ‘ignore’. Almost immediately it began ringing again. And a third time. Phil frowned. “Maybe you should take that.”

“We’re on a _date_.” The phone was still ringing. Phil was probably right. He hit ‘answer’. “Someone had better be bleeding,” he answered with a growl.

“Funny you should say that—” Tony replied sounding... almost panicked.

“Talk to me.”

“You need to come get Natasha. She took a good knock to the head and I don’t want to just point her towards the subway and hope.”

“Natasha?” Clint asked. What was Tony doing with Natasha that had resulted in a head blow? Clint’s fist was going to be asking some questions real soon. “Is she alright?”

“I think Banner got the bleeding to stop—”

There were sounds of a scuffle as the phone was wrestled from Tony. “Barton,” Bucky’s voice sounded angry and worried, “get your fucking ass down here right now.” Bucky gave him an address.

“Yeah, okay,” Clint replied. Bucky had him repeat the address.

Phil had moved in close and protective, probably hearing part of the conversation in the process. “I have to— Nat got into something and I need a cab.”

Phil squeezed his forearm and stepped into the street. A cab stopped almost immediately. Clint fumbled his phone getting it back into his pocket and chased it around the street like an idiot as it bounced twice, thoroughly justifying the industrial protective case. Phil held the door like a gentleman, patient and a little bit bemused. He pushed Clint into the cab and before Clint could protest, forced him into the far seat with his own hip, closing the door behind him.

“You shouldn’t— you don’t have to,” Clint protested.

Phil gave the address Clint had repeated to the cabby and settled back, supremely unmoved by Clint’s protests. Wordlessly, Phil reached out and hooked their pinkies together, giving Clint a look that snapped his mouth shut. The cab wove through evening crowds in a manner which Natasha would have approved.

The address was in the Lower East Side in the basement level of a former tenement below a barber shop and a place selling expensive shoes. The door jangled as Clint burst through it. There was a stool and a small antechamber which was unoccupied. It looked like a grunge nightclub or a low-class cabaret. Clint pushed through the velvet curtains. Tony almost walked into him, coming to check on the jangle at the door. His hair was askew, mirroring his apparent inner turmoil. He grabbed Clint by the elbow and took him through a small hallway, a concrete locker room, and into a large, open gym.

Natasha’s head was resting on a bundled up sweatshirt. Clint’s world zeroed in on her. He didn’t notice whether Phil had followed. He didn’t note who else was in the room. Natasha was the only important thing. He ran to her, pushing off a hand that tried to hold him back. A dark-haired man was kneeling by her side, fingers over her pulse point. He had a ringer of saline resting over his shoulder, and the tubing and needle went into Natasha’s arm. There was blood smudged across one of the lenses of his glasses.

He knelt by her head and reached towards her. “Please don’t,” the man monitoring her pulse said. “I only just got the split in her scalp to stop bleeding and I think it’s going to start again. I don’t think I can get butterflies on there because of her hair. I was going to see if I could put a few stitches in before she woke up.” The man transferred the saline bag to Clint’s shoulder and shouted, “James, get me a suture kit.”

“Are you qualified for this?” Clint asked.

“Does she have health insurance?” the other man asked with a raised eyebrow.

“If she needs the hospital, we’ll get her into the hospital,” Phil said, his shin resting like a comforting bulwark against Clint’s back.

The other man shook his head. “She should be fine. I’m a little worried that she hasn’t woken up but her pupils are responding normally. I’ll stitch her together and you guys can monitor her for changes once she’s come around.” Clint glanced up at Coulson who shrugged.

Bucky jogged in and held out a handful of items. “Anything else you need, Banner?” Bucky asked.

“This should do it. Take care of Steve.”

Clint’s head came up, “Wait, what happened to Steve?”

Bucky nodded down at Natasha, a hint of rueful admiration in his expression. “She did, brother. That dame...” he shook his head.

Clint stared down at Natasha. Banner snapped on some gloves. “Can you hold her head steady in case she starts coming around?” Banner asked, indicating two places he could touch on her head. Banner worked quickly, slathering the wound with antibacterial ointment and immediately starting the bleed once more. The suture kit looked like it had been intended for a vet, but Banner wielded it with professionalism, knitting the broken skin together with just a few stitches. He clipped the thread, applied a bandage, and sat back on his heels with a huff of satisfaction.

Banner snapped off the gloves, dropping them on a pile of refuse from cleaning the wound. “I’m Bruce by the way.” Bruce held out a hand.

Clint shook it. “Clint. Barton. I run the—”

“-Coffee Bandit truck, I know.” Bruce smiled shyly.

“Hey, are you— Tony mentioned a guy who runs the line in our warehouse space.”

“That’s me.”

“You must move in and out of there like a fucking ninja.”

Bruce shrugged, “I try not to make a fuss.” 

Bucky came out of the back, a distraught-looking Steve trailing behind him. Bucky set a bucket down next to Natasha’s head and pulled out a rag. He began trying to wash some of the blood out of Natasha’s hair around the wound but with one hand it was a difficult proposition. “Let me get that,” Clint offered. Bucky looked like he was going to fight Clint over the rag but saw something in Clint’s eyes and relinquished it. Clint worked it through the crusty straggles of hair, drawing specks of dried blood out with gentle care.

Now that he knew Natasha wasn’t dying, Clint spared a glance around the room. Tony was there, a hand on Steve’s shoulder, talking to him with quiet urgency. There was a group of people Clint didn’t know, clumped around a water cooler. Phil was talking with Bruce.

“I’m glad she’s got someone like you looking after her,” Bucky said out of the blue.

Clint squeezed out the rag, brownish red staining the bucket water. “She looks after herself,” he said finally. “I’m just along for the ride.”

Bucky’s hand gripped Clint’s shoulder. “Now that ain’t true. We all need someone to be there for us when we fall down. Some of us more literally than others.”

“I haven’t felt like such a good friend lately,” Clint admitted.

“Aaw, hell, we all say stupid shit sometimes. If Steve had held everything I said against me after I got back - during rehab... Sometimes I can’t believe the guy still wants to stick around me. So you said some stupid shit; she forgives you.”

Clint’s hands stilled in Natasha’s hair. “How did you know about that?”

Bucky frowned. “She didn’t— damn she plays it close to the chest sometimes. She came to our place when you guys had your spat. Convinced her sometimes guys are just idiots.”

Clint glanced at Bucky’s uncharacteristically open face as he looked down at Natasha, and it clicked. “You guys are sleeping together!” Clint blurted out.

Bucky quirked an eyebrow at him. “Smooth, Barton, smooth. And no, we aren’t.”

Natasha cracked an eye open. “Are you two done working that out?”

They stared down at her. “Have you been pretending to be unconscious so we would talk about our feelings?” Clint asked.

“Just help me sit up so Rogers can apologize until he’s blue in the face and I can go home,” Natasha replied.

\--

Phil helped Clint get Natasha into a cab. The cabbie gave them a leery look that Phil stared down in the rear view mirror. Natasha leaned against a window with Clint stuffed in the middle seat. “No falling asleep,” he told her sternly. “We’re supposed to keep you awake for twelve hours.”

“If I get a brain bleed I’ll tell you,” she replied grumpily. They drove in silence through dark streets smeared with sodium lighting. “I’m sorry I messed up your date,” she added quietly so only Clint should have been able to hear her.

“You’re gonna be fine and that’s all that matters.” Clint kissed her temple and wrinkled his nose at the coppery aftertaste.

“Besides, I’d hardly call it ruined,” Phil added. He laced his pinky together with Clint’s. “I get to see your place, after all. That’s usually third date material.”

“Uh... it’s not clean.” Clint was suddenly anxious.

“That’s fine. We’re just going to keep Natasha company.”

“We are?”

Phil gave him an unimpressed look.

Natasha walked herself up to their apartment, taking the rickety and always worrisome elevator instead of the stairs. Clint hovered next to her in case she became unsteady. He settled her into a nest of blankets on the bottom bunk and went to fix her tea. Phil rummaged through the medicine cabinet. “Doctor Banner said she could have ibuprofen, but not aspirin. Is that somewhere special?” Phil asked from the bathroom.

“By the front door in the key nook,” Clint replied. “Wait, Banner wasn’t a doctor.”

“Not of medicine,” Phil agreed, “but he has a doctorate in physics, he said.”

“What’s he doing hanging out with us schmucks, then?”

Phil shrugged.

“I want _Dog Cops_ ,” Natasha demanded from her bed, petulant as any sick child.

“The DVD’s are under the TV, can you—” Clint asked.

“Of course.” The sound of the _Dog Cops_ theme played in the bedroom/living room before Clint finished making the tea. Phil slid into their kitchenette, and laid his palm against Clint’s hip. The warm contact was comforting without being sexual, loving without being demanding and so, so Phil. “So, this is your place.”

“This is our place,” Clint agreed.

“Bunk beds.” Phil said it with a wry edge of humor.

“We both like being up high. Last one out in the morning gets the top bunk.”

“Sensible arrangement,” Phil noted, leaning in towards Clint.

“We thought so.” They shared a breath, then another. The Phil leaned in and pressed a light kiss against his mouth, suckling gently on Clint’s lower lip.

Phil pulled away and Clint leaned after him, chasing the contact. “I like your place. It’s very you.”

“Really?” Clint asked, the word slipping out before he could pull it back.

Far from mocking, Phil smiled reassuringly. “Yes, really.”

They stayed up all night watching a marathon of _Dog Cops_. Phil would jiggle Clint awake so he could jiggle Natasha awake and check her pupils. When Clint woke up in the morning Phil was slumped over on the couch under him, jacket off and tie loosened, the first and second button on his shirt undone. A tantalizing slice of throat and collarbone which were normally bound behind silk and a starched collar were exposed, softened by sleep.

This man who had spent the better part of a year chasing him and his partner had sacrificed the end of his second date. He did this to rescue that same partner, injured, from what was looking more and more like an underground fight ring. Clint had never been with someone who displayed such effortless generosity, and he was finding himself more and more hopelessly taken with each moment of kindness.

Phil frowned and murmured, just starting to wake. Clint braced himself and leaned down for a kiss. Phil smiled into it.

“You want some coffee?” Clint asked.

\--

Clint was familiar with the adage that many hands made light work, but he had never honestly known enough people to put the adage to the test. For the first time in his life, freed from the isolating influence of his brother and partnered with Natasha, he found their situation much changed. They asked for help, and miracle of miracles, they got it.

The main body of work on their bay involved enclosing the kitchen area from the rest of the warehouse space, and installing an up-to-code bathroom. Tony had some other modifications in mind, but those were the big things. Natasha was a bit of a whiz with wiring, and Clint could handle a plumber’s torch with the best of them, so the stuff they really needed help with was attaching studs to the existing metal framework, putting up insulation and drywall and venting, and making the place look like more than a collection of project-displays from the wall materials section of the Home Depot. Tony was going to help, of course. He told them Bruce-who-worked-the-line would be there along with Happy and a few other employees they were familiar with. Steve and Bucky were committed, of course, and Phil wouldn’t miss the barn raising.

Pepper arranged the delivery of materials for early in the morning. Steve and Bucky were there not long after Clint and Natasha arrived. Natasha was still on light duty between a few truly impressive bruises and her stitches. Steve walked up to her first thing and apologized again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

Natasha tapped him on the cheek - lighter than a slap but more forceful than a pat, silencing him. “I’ll be fine, Steve. We both knew what we were getting into and a worst case scenario happened. Doc stitched me up and it’s fine.”

“Still, I can’t—”

“If you keep apologizing I’ll think it’s because you think I’m weak,” she warned him flatly.

“I would never—”

“You’re forgiven, Cap. Go in peace.” She tapped his cheek lightly once more, and it looked like absolution. Steve bowed his head and when he raised it again, it was with a smile.

He clapped his hands together. “Lets get down to it, then.”

Bruce slunk in wearing coveralls from the rear of their building, out of a pile of junk Clint was certain was impassable. “I heard you guys might need some hands today,” he said with a shy smirk, holding his palms up.

“We sure could,” Steve agreed, holding out a hand to the stranger. “Steve Rogers.”

“Bruce Banner,” Bruce introduced himself. “Where do you need me?”

“How do you feel about wiring fans for venting?”

Bruce shrugged, “I used to work robotics in college, and I’ve put together lines for Tony for the last few years. I should be good.” Bruce was handed schematics and Natasha as backup and sent into the ceiling to wreak some productive destruction. He was a bit of a menace between dropping tools and the occasional shouts of surprise or frustration that startled everyone involved, but Natasha seemed to wrangle him well enough.

Bucky sent suspicious looks towards the ceiling where her voice could be heard, as though the power of his displeased gaze could keep Natasha from engaging in a whirlwind romance without him. Phil appeared mid-morning just when Clint was getting ready to put a wrench through Bucky’s head. He wanted to scream _just ask her out_ or _stay away from my Natasha_ or _you’re not good enough_.

Bucky seemed good for her, though. Whatever weird flirting they had going on and whatever relationship that was building to, she seemed more stable in his presence. She seemed more of the fully actualized woman she might have been had her life not been scarred so early by loss and a perversion of her freedom. The feminine orchid hidden under her tough-as-nails exterior blossomed in Bucky’s presence in a way which it didn’t even around Clint. Something about Bucky made her feel safe, and though Clint didn’t see it, he trusted Natasha that it was real.

Tony breezed in around noon with sacks of burgers and Happy in tow. “The gravy train has arrived!” he announced as he walked in.

“Subtle, Stark,” Bucky said with a hint of derision.

“Subtle doesn’t sell... anything,” Stark retorted. “And subtle won’t get this place turned into a bakery by this evening. Come on, people - lets get some drywall up!” Tony clapped his hands together. Everyone rolled their eyes.

The walls went up surprisingly quickly. The plaster had to cure for a few days, but the structure of the room was up by the end of the day with markings for where the gas and electric would be put through, and the plumbing was taking shape. Bruce and Natasha emerged from the ceiling during lunch and told them all the fans were operating properly. Tony began asking if they were _sure_ but dual glared daggers shut him up.

Bucky spent the rest of the day trying to get Natasha to take it easy. Tony spent the rest of the day trying to draw Steve’s attention through increasingly annoying displays.

Clint put a hand on Steve’s arm. “You know Tony is trying to get your attention, right?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Tony tries to get everyone’s attention.”

“No, but he’s trying to get your attention because he’s _interested_ in you. Like,” Clint made kissy-kissy noises.

Steve blushed. “What?”

Clint nodded.

“Are you sure? I mean, Tony is... Tony.”

“And cryptic as that statement was, I stand by my assessment.”

Steve slanted a doubtful look at Stark, wielding a plumber's torch while not wearing the proper safety equipment. “He flirts with everyone,” Steve replied. “I mean, you were there that time... with Bucky...” Steve blushed.

“Would you believe me if I said I thought he put on that show to get you all wound up?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well believe it, stud.” Clint clapped a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Stark is out to tap your all-American ass.”

Steve blushed so hard Clint was worried he might break blood vessels.

The next Clint saw of them, Steve was confronting a suddenly indifferent-looking Tony. Clint sighed. They would have to work whatever was going on between them for themselves.

Bucky coaxed Natasha to head home, leaving Clint and Phil leaning against one another on the bench seat/couch in exhausted slouches. The bones of their new space were outlined in plaster and metal. A huge rolling garage door separated the truck from the bakery, and they actually had a ceiling with appropriate lighting shaping up. The walls were depressing drywall grey, but that would change with a coat of paint and some baseboards.

“This is so great,” Clint looked around the space. “This is going to be so great.”

Phil hummed in agreement.

“We couldn’ta done this without you, Phil. Thanks.” Clint leaned his head against Phil’s shoulder, and Phil slung his arm around him.

“This place is going to look great when you’re done with it. I’m really proud of you.” Phil kissed the top of Clint’s head. Clint scooched closer, burying his nose in the crook of Phil’s neck. He smelled of hard work and sweat. Clint nibbled and the fine skin at the base of his neck and Phil groaned. They ended up horizontal on the couch, ostensibly to improve the ease of their makeout session. Between the early morning and the unaccustomed physical labor, though, they both fell asleep.

\--

“We never talked about the other night and how you got your skull split open.”

Natasha had just taken out her stitches in a thoroughly disgusting piece of home doctoring. Her hair would cover the rather ugly join of flesh, but the bruising was still awful enough that Clint was the face of the truck for the foreseeable future. They didn’t want to frighten customers out of purchases.

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Natasha scoffed, “I split the skin. Head wounds just bleed a lot.”

“ _Steve_ split your scalp open, then. That doesn’t really make it better. You’re not convincing me how sane and safe whatever the hell it is you do is.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and fluffed her hair over the healing wound, wincing just a bit. “Have you ever seen the film _Fight Club_?” Natasha asked. Natasha had a patchy relationship with modern media, so the fact that she was trying to explain something using that unfamiliar touchstone was noteworthy.

“Is someone suffering from multiple personalities?” Clint asked.

“No.” Natasha stared at him as though trying to decide something. “If you’re really worried you can come one night. There are rules though,” she warned.

\--

Happy was sitting at the entryway like a bouncer when they arrived. Natasha had a gym bag. Clint and Phil were wearing ‘clothes they could move in’ as per Natasha’s suggestion. Natasha nodded to Happy and pushed through the velvet curtains. Clint and Phil followed and stowed their wallets and keys in a locker. Phil shrugged out of his hoodie.

Natasha passed unchallenged through to the gym but a voice stopped Phil and Clint in their tracks. “Stop,” it commanded. The voice was female and with a cadence that indicated she was used to command. “Close your eyes.” Phil and Clint exchanged an apprehensive look but did so. Clint felt fingers and a cold trail wiping in a diagonal down his face. “Enter.”

Clint opened his eyes. A slash of red paint bisected Phil’s face in a diagonal line, marking him like primal war paint. Phil looked worried, but Clint grinned.

The gym was darker than the last time they had been there creating the feeling of a cave. Figures moved half in shadow around the perimeter of what was a loose arena formed around thin mats. “We have new blood tonight,” the woman who had marked them announced. She was tall and blonde with powerful thighs, muscled shoulders, and the sharp look of a person who had experience in the thick of combat. He knuckles were scarred and she wore a sports bra and running shorts like battle armor. She could have been a Valkyrie out of legend, and she was obviously in charge of the proceedings. Her announcement was greeted with whooping cheers. Clint identified Natasha’s voice along with Tony, Bucky and Steve. There were others and Clint tried to pick them out of the dimness without success.

“You know the rules of the fight club,” she said it with the weight of a ritual behind the words.

“Don’t talk about fight club,” Clint replied with a frown. She shot him an amused look.

“First night you fight,” Phil murmured and Clint’s eyes locked on Phil.

“We don’t have to fight each other, do we?” Clint asked in an urgent undertone.

The woman clapped her hands on the back of their necks and walked them towards the arena. “There wouldn’t be much point in setting the new blood against itself. No. The field is open to any comers.” She gave Clint an extra shove and he stumbled into the center of the arena.

“I want to—” Phil began, but she held him back with an arm across his chest.

“He goes first,” she said.

“Captain,” Steve peeled off of the edge of the arena, moving forward to protest.

“Cap,” the ringmaster interrupted, “stand down. My ring, my rules. And someone already spoke for this one.” Phil shot him a worried look but subsided. “Winter Soldier?” Bucky stepped out of the loose circle formed by observers. Clint caught a flash of red hair that was Natasha, circling for a good view. “You want the honor?” the woman Steve called Captain asked.

“I do,” Bucky agreed.

“Rules?” she asked.

Bucky shrugged. “Standard will do me.”

Bucky was wearing a white undershirt, pinned at the back so as not to hang off his shoulder. The stump of his left arm was bared, scarred red and purple and somehow it looked like anything but a sign of weakness. He was whipcord lean and muscled from his work in the garage. He moved with a loose grace, holding out his hand. Tony stepped up and put on a boxing wrap for him. A black man with close-cropped hair and a grim smirk pressed a pair of wraps into Clint’s chest. He took the hint and began putting them on.

“Fight will end with a yield, a knockout, blood on the mat, or the clock. Non-engagement will not be tolerated. Groin and eyes are off limits.” The same man handed Clint a mouthguard and shoved a piece of headgear on him which was designed for kickboxing. “Fighters will touch fists and separate.” Bucky had kicked off his shoes and socks, bare feet flexing on the mat in anticipation. Clint removed his as well, stepping onto the mat.

Clint didn’t particularly want to fight Bucky. Natasha had been close-lipped about what went on at her fight club, but he had the feeling attending - no matter how painful - would reveal some missing piece to him regarding Natasha. Bucky had only one arm, yes, but he had a coiled strength and a dark sort of viciousness. Clint approached for a fistbump with Bucky.

“No hard feelings, right man?” Clint asked.

Bucky smiled crookedly around the mouth guard and backed up. “No hard feelings,” Bucky agreed. A bell clanged and Bucky almost teleported, kicking high at Clint’s head. Clint got his arms up in time to block some of the blow but not all of it. It was not an auspicious beginning. Clint had been in his share of fights, though none of them had been so formalized. He was used to fighting multiple assailants, fighting while drunk, fighting people drunk or high enough that _they_ felt no pain, and fighting when he knew he couldn’t win. Clint had punched people, broken a bar stool over the back of a guy’s thighs, and choked out at least three separate people over the years. He was far from defenseless, but he also knew that compared to Bucky, he didn’t have an ounce of the other man’s killer instinct.

Bucky was a sniper. Bucky had been in the Army. Bucky had, with a hundred percent certainty, killed men. Bucky knew what it meant to take another person apart in a way that was alien to Clint. Clint was a scrapper, and if he gave Bucky the chance to tear him to pieces, he would take it and leave Clint on the mat, no question, no uncertainty.

Clint roared and rushed Bucky in a tackle, hitting him in the diaphragm with his shoulder and dropping them both to the mat. Bucky tried to get in a blow to his instep as they went down but by luck Clint fell out of the way of the kick on the way down. Clint felt his body weight press the air out of Bucky’s lungs as they landed and he grappled around, trying to flip the other man. Bucky wheezed but wrapped his arm around Clint’s neck and over his back to grip his armpit. His right leg wrapped around Clint’s butt and through his legs. With a powerful torsional movement, Bucky flipped Clint, releasing his hold around Clint’s back as he did so and delivering an elbow to the side of Clint’s head with the motion.

Clint’s head rang. The noise of the crowd was a blurry wash of sensory input which he was unprepared to parse. He got his hands up to block a second blow from Bucky’s fist but only barely. The blow hit just above his elbow instead, Bucky’s knuckle jamming into a nerve cluster and causing his hand to go numb. Clint rolled, throwing Bucky from his pin. They separated for a moment, panting. Bucky had gotten his breath back and didn’t look much worse for the wear. He rolled his shoulders where he crouched, ready to spring. Clint eyed Bucky, his focus narrowing down to that moment and that man and nothing else.

They both rose as though acting on mysterious choreography. Clint’s head swam from the blows but he narrowed his eyes and focused. Bucky moved in, leading with the right. Clint absorbed most of the blow on his already deadened arm and struck out with a body blow. Bucky grunted and didn’t move out quickly enough so he did it again. Bucky’s leg snaked between them, twisting around Clint’s calf and dropping him in a leg lock. Clint grabbed for Bucky’s torso as he went down, dragging the other man with him.

Clint saw his opening. He scrambled and got his arm around Bucky’s neck from behind, setting up to choke out the other man in a practiced movement. Clint tightened the pressure, cutting off the flow of Bucky’s carotid artery. Bucky bucked his whole body, flailed his arm backwards at Clint, and passed out.

As soon as he felt Bucky go limp he released the pressure, crawling back with his hands raised. There was ringing. Clint rolled on his back, breathing hard. He felt like he might throw up. He felt like he might cry. He felt amazing and alive.

Natasha stood over him, offering a hand up. He took it, and as he rose she smeared fingers covered in red paint over the rest of his face. She held up his hand when he was upright. “That one passes,” the Valkyrie declared.

Clint was absorbed into the far side of the ring of people, Natasha propping up his one side, a lanky woman with dark hair providing a bulwark on the other. He was part of the pack.

Phil stood at the far end of the circle, vulnerable-looking in a pool of light spilling from the locker room. He was staring hungrily at Clint. Steve and Happy dragged the recovering Bucky out of the circle and propped him against a wall.

“One more trial before the main events,” the Valkyrie announced, looking at Phil. “Who wants the honor?”

“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Clint murmured to Natasha. 

She shrugged. “He’s a big boy. He can leave if he wants to.”

“I want him,” the black man who had handed Clint the wraps said. He was in a gi shirt and loose pants, and looked just as deadly if not more so than Barnes.

“The War Machine claims the honor. Same rules as before.”

A small, stocky man with wings of black hair stepped up to help kit out Phil. The man they called War Machine taped his own wraps. “That’s James Rhodes,” Natasha informed him. “Him and Stark go way back, but Rhodey went military when Stark went ultra-slacker.”

Rhodes moved like a boxer, or at least a man very practiced in the art of hitting things with his fists. The gi spoke of some Asian martial arts, though it was unmarked with a school and Clint didn’t know enough about gi construction to identify a discipline from the cut. Phil was in basketball shorts and a tank top, barefoot but wearing an ankle brace on his right ankle. Clint had never seen Phil in such little clothing, and before his fight he’d been too distracted to take it in.

Phil was built. Under his suit, Phil was composed entirely of muscle and self-assurance wrapped in enough padding to make him look unassuming. Clint’s mouth dropped open in an expression of untempered lust. Phil wrapped his hands like the motion was familiar and with each circle of his wrist, an entirely unfamiliar personality ascended. The Phil which Clint was familiar with was kind, affable, a little goofy and easily embarrassed though he tried not to show it. The Phil that Clint knew glowed with pleasure and looked fondly at Clint and generally made it seem as though the world was full of gentle, loving things which Clint had never before encountered in any appreciable number. 

The Phil that rose was tough. Clint couldn’t find a more apt word. Phil’s expression was like hardened leather, the way he moved, smooth economy. His toes flexed as he walked on the mat and Clint realized that this was Phil’s game face. This was the look of a man who was not going down easily, and it was a look that reached into Clint’s middle and twisted in all the right ways. Clint whimpered. The woman to his other side looked down at him approvingly.

“He does look like a bit of a badass,” she admitted. Clint nodded, attention focused on the fight.

They got head protection and and mouthguards and approached, bumping fists. The Captain rang an old-fashioned school bell, and the fight was on.

“You got any training?” Rhodes asked loudly.

Phil shrugged, a ripple of shoulder muscle, and cocked his head. “A bit of Judo. A bit of Aikido. I used to wrestle.” That was all news to Clint, but the way Phil was moving it was not surprising. “What about you?”

“Rhodey is a Colonel in the Air Force and a black belt in like, everything,” Tony catcalled. He was obviously proud of his friend. “Now they called this a ‘fight’, not a ‘talk’, if I’m not mistaken. Captain?” Tony cocked his head at the Valkyrie for support.

She nodded. “Gentlemen,” she said warningly.

“You ready?” Rhodes asked, gesturing towards the center of the mat.

“Since you asked so politely,” Phil agreed. They circled closer to each other, hands up to defend their faces, elbows down to defend their ribs. Rhodes had tight fists, ready for a punch, while Phil’s hands remained open, ready to grab or strike. 

Phil noticeably made an effort to relax. Rhodes chose that moment to strike, moving in with a jab and a right cross. Phil swayed back and to the side, using the momentum of the right cross to pull Rhodes off balance forwards. Rhodes fell but tucked and rolled with a whomp, rising to his feet and moving on a diagonal to circle Phil. “That was smooth,” Rhodes complemented Phil, grinning lopsidedly.

“Seriously, what’s with all the chit chat?” Bucky griped, joining the circle and rubbing his head.

Rhodes stepped in again, this time maintaining his balance and going to trip Phil. Phil circled out of the gambit neatly and closed the distance even further. Phil gripped Rhode’s gi and planted his feet, throwing the other man over his hip. Rhodes went down loudly and Phil followed, stepping to straddle the other man’s hips and attempt a pin. He almost managed an arm lock but Rhodes broke it, striking Phil across the face with his elbow and throwing him with a twist of his hips. Phil rolled and crouched like a gorilla ready to charge, hands on the ground, the tendons in the soles of his feet standing out with his tension. Rhodes kicked at Phil’s head; Phil shrugged his shoulder and let the force push him into another roll but didn’t sustain any injuries from the blow. 

Phil had yet to initiate an attack, and in that Clint recognized the man he knew. Phil would bide his time and use the other man’s strength against him. It didn’t seem to be a winning gambit, but by encouraging attack and counterattack he would sate the crowd’s demand for combat while avoiding serious injury to either party and gaining credibility. 

Rhodes tried to circle around Phil’s back, cheating the circle so it seemed he was still out of reach when in fact he had moved towards Phil. Rhodes darted in and grabbed a fist ful of Phil’s tank, intending to throw him or knock him off balance but the thin fabric simply ripped into his hands leaving Rhodes momentarily without purpose. Phil slapped him hard with his right hand over the ear and jaw, visibly rattling the other man and followed it up with a knee towards his face. The vicious motion seemed to startle Phil even as he performed it and Rhodes shrugged his shoulder, rolling the force into the meat of his torso and surging upwards, an arm under Phil’s thigh.

Phil went down with Rhodes on top of him and though stunned, Phil continued to struggle as Rhodes attempted to pin him. Twice Rhodes nearly got there and twice Phil wriggled out of it. They grunted as they wrestled on the mat, legs writhing in an attempt to contain the other combatant. The last shreds of Phil’s tanktop were torn from him giving Rhodes even less traction to work with. They were each going for a submission; pummeling until one of them passed out was off the menu, Clint supposed.

The fight ended when Rhodes got Phil pinned under him, his bodyweight and legs over Phil’s torso, his arm wrapped backwards around Phil’s neck. Phil’s legs flailed and he grunted for a good five seconds, and submitted.

Rhodes rolled off of him and they panted for a moment. Rhodes stood first, offering his hand to Phil. “That was good,” Rhodes said. “None of these clowns can execute a decent throw.”

“It was my pleasure, Colonel,” Phil replied with a smile. The woman at Clint’s side stepped forward, dipping her fingers in a tub of paint attached to the wall. She approached Phil and slathered another red mark down his face.

Phil’s expression went from boyishly delighted to shocked and confused, “Maria, what are you doing here?”

“This one passes too,” the Valkyrie decreed. We need names.” She put her head on top of Clint’s had as though blessing him or selling him at auction.

“Tar Baby,” Bucky suggested. “He takes hits and keeps coming.”

“Headlock!” someone else added.

“Pain in the ass,” Tony shouted.

“Hawkeye,” Phil said in the quiet way he had that could cut through conversations so easily. Clint frowned at Phil. “You’re an Iowa boy.”

There was a moment of silence. “Hawkeye, it is,” the Valkyrie declared. “How about our little desk jockey?” She put her hand on Phil’s head.

“Suit,” Natasha said before anybody else could speak.

“Suit,” she agreed, nodding. “Welcome to the Corps. Let’s get to the main event.”

Phil had Maria by the arm and was talking urgently with her. She was wearing a look of amused condescension, and the conversation ended in a stalemate. Phil went to stand by Clint, hip to hip, and Clint was reminded of how attractive he found Phil’s look of intense focus and relaxed self-control. Him being bare-chested and sweaty didn’t hurt either.

Natasha was out of rotation due to her still-healing head wound, but everyone else was apparently expected to fight. Steve and Happy boxed, resulting in Happy laid out on the floor. Tony and Maria went at it with more enthusiasm than skill on either of their parts. Maria fought dirty, directly out of the US Army Self-Defense Manual, Level I and II, and Tony was somewhere between sloppy boxing and impatient Tai Chi. Tony ended up submitting to an armbar to avoid dislocating his shoulder. Other people Phil and Clint didn’t know fought under increasingly silly and exotic names. Power Man, a massive black man built like a heavyweight champion and a guy who looked like he could have come out of a Strong Man carnival sideshow whom they simply called “Thing” fought. A small Asian woman, Wasp, and an albino kid called Quicksilver moved almost too quickly for Clint to follow. The guy who had wrapped Phil’s wrists, Wolverine, rounded out the night going after a massive Russian called Colossus with biceps the size of Clint’s thighs. Improbably, Wolverine won.

The ring formation broke up after that. Colossus had a cut down his cheek that was bleeding freely and was the cause of the fight’s end. Power Man - Clint was really going to have to learn these people's real names because that was just weird - helped Colossus staunch the blood from his cut. Wasp and Maria worked on some self-defense movements and Rhodey tried to teach Happy how to fall so he wouldn’t crack his head so often, but the rest of the group migrated over to a long L-shaped couch by a mini-fridge.

Tony passed out beers and Wolverine pulled out a tub of noxious-smelling bruise ointment which he used and distributed. Clint and Phil sat on the couch, hands clasped together. Steve simply sprawled on the floor by the couch, and in a chain reaction, Bucky sprawled against him and Natasha curled on top of Bucky.

“That was a nice choke out,” Bucky told Clint approvingly. I haven’t gone down that quick since basic.”

Clint shrugged. It was one of the few things he’d learned that halted everyone in their tracks, and was quick enough for him to execute before he was overwhelmed by his assailants. “I’d say I’d show you but I don’t think it’d work for you.”

Bucky barked a laugh.

“Move over, Stark,” the Valkyrie ordered. “I want to get to talk to the new meat.” Tony scooted over without even a token protest, his naked jealousy burning a hole through Bucky and Natasha, sprawled over the human real estate he wanted for himself. Steve drank a beer, oblivious to the covetous look directed at him. “I’m Carol, but the guys call me Captain.”

“Captain Marvel,” Tony corrected in a tone that told Clint he was doing it to be obnoxious.

“Yeah,” Carol drawled.

“I’m glad you let us come this evening,” Phil said.

“Let you nothing.” Carol waved a hand. “You boys earned your spot. You ever in the mood for a tussle come back. You’re welcome anytime. We don’t tolerate loose lips, whiners, or bystanders, but you boys proved you weren’t the last two and Natasha and Hill vouched for your discretion.”

“I had no idea Maria was involved in something like this,” Phil admitted. “It does explain a few things, though.”

“The knee?” Carol asked.

“I never had known her to ski,” Phil agreed. Carol smirked and moved off.

Phil had put on his hoodie again so he was no longer bare-chested, but the mental image had yet to leave Clint’s thoughts. The physical side of their relationship thus far had been above-the-waist and entirely with clothes on, but Clint was getting the feeling that that was going to change soon. It was certainly going to change if he had any say in the matter. 

Clint leaned close to Phil. “Is it weird that I found that really hot?” he asked.

Phil tried to suppress a smile. “If it is then we’re both weird,” he replied, nudging closer.

Clint turned his head to kiss Phil on the jaw, but Phil turned to do something similar at the perfect moment. They kissed, sweetly and then with more heat.

“Aaugh, gross. This is the manly fighting couch, not the makeout couch,” Tony protested.

“It could be both,” Steve replied, censorious. “It is also the womanly fighting couch.” Phil and Clint both blushed.

Natasha and Bucky rolled off of Steve with a thump, caught in something that might have been fighting and might have been very aggressive foreplay.  
\--


	7. Chapter 7

They were approaching the big day. The inspection was two weeks away, and the bay was shaping up into a charming, health-department-friendly space. Clint had taken the truck over to Bucky’s to wrestle with proper venting, leaving Phil and Natasha to struggle with fitting doors onto the bathroom and back wall.

“You’re pretty good with that,” Natasha commented. Phil was wielding a chisel and hammer to carve out a recess for the hinge plates.

“Everything I need to know I learned in shop class,” Phil said with a smirk. They were silent while he worked.

“If you hurt Clint I’ll hunt you down and end you.” The comment was all the more shocking for the abruptness of it. “They won’t even know where to start looking for the body,” Natasha added.

“I...” Phil began, trailing off. The hammer in his hand was frozen, ready to swing. “It would never be my intention to hurt him,” he decided on finally.

“I see where you two are going, and... I like you, Coulson, but Clint—”

“Is family,” Phil finished. Natasha nodded. “I understand.” Phil went back to chiseling the door. “Is Clint giving the shovel talk to Barnes right now?” Phil asked. Natasha frowned in confusion. “The, ‘if you hurt her I will end you’ talk is the shovel talk,” Phil clarified. 

“Why would Clint be doing that?” Natasha asked.

“You and he are...” Natasha quirked an eyebrow at Phil. “You aren’t?” Phil asked, confused.

“Aren’t we what?”

“Dating,” Phil clarified. “Or... something.”

Natasha frowned, passing her flathead screwdriver from hand to hand like a knife fighter in a show of agitation. “Barnes has been helping me with some stuff, that’s all.”

“Stuff from when you were a kid?” Phil asked kindly. Natasha glared at him but nodded once, decisively. “I have some people looking into that for me. I should hear something back within a week.”

“That’s good.” She didn’t sound as though she thought it was good.

Phil finished with the chisel and held the door steady while she installed the hinge plates. “Clint and I really thought you and Barnes were... physical.”

“We’re just friends,” Natasha replied defensively.

“I don’t think he thinks of you as just friends. He seems quite interested, in fact.” Natasha looked doubtfully at Phil. “Really.”

“I don’t really... I haven’t... Are you sure?” Natasha suddenly looked her age in a way that she never had before. Natasha was self-assurance wrapped around competence and grim determination. She carried herself with an almost asexual quality most of the time, apparently unaware, or unwilling to admit she was a beautiful woman and suffer the illusion of weakness that accompanied that. Minutes before this woman had been threatening his life, and now she was looking at him for guidance.

“As sure as I ever am about anything,” Phil nodded.

“What do I do?”

“What do you want to do?”

A complex series of emotions flitted over Natasha’s face: desire, jealousy, fear, and loss. “I want what you and Clint have,” she admitted finally, “but I’m too fucked up for any of that.”

“Says who?” Natasha shook her head. Phil put down his chisel and hammer, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “Natasha, you are an amazing woman and you deserve everything you want. I admire what you have done with your life, so much, and you should never think something that you want is out of your reach.”

\--

“Miss Romanoff?” A tall black man in a dark dress shirt and darker suit stared up into the dimness of Faizeh’s interior. He had an eye patch and he looked as though he might normally eat the souls of the weak for breakfast, but was willing to make an exception and take a coffee and crescent roll, just this once.

“Sorry, just us chickens,” Clint replied. He stared suspiciously at the man; he didn’t recognize him from Carol Danvers’ fight club, and aside from that he and Natasha shared virtually all their friends. He didn’t look like an evil Russian. Though he exuded a subtle aura of danger, he didn’t sound as though he was trying to be intimidating.

The man noted Clint’s suspicious appraisal. “Coulson sent me. It’s about her papers.”

“Oh.” That changed things. “She’ll be back with creamer in half a jiff. Can I get you something?” Fury ordered a cup of the Clover. The beans for the day were Guatemalan, earthy with a smooth finish and a surprisingly rich body, and Fury nodded in approval over his cup.

Clint dealt with a few customers, and when Natasha still hadn’t returned he stuck his hand out the window. “I’m Clint Barton, by the way.”

“Nick Fury.” Nick shook. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Yeah?”

“I work with Coulson.”

“Right.” Fury was also the one who approved their unique licensing situation. “Thanks for going out on a limb for us.”

Fury shrugged. “That was all Phil. He said he saw something special in you guys.”

Natasha skidded to a halt at the rear door of the truck, unholstering two half gallons of creamer.

Clint indicated Natasha with his eyebrows. “That’s her. Take as long as you need.”

Fury took her aside and they talked for a long time. Clint tried not to watch and it was easy considering he was alone running the truck.

At the end, Fury and Natasha shook hands, and they parted ways.

“Well?” Clint asked.

Natasha had a shell-shocked expression. “It’s sorted. I’m supposed to go for an interview with the State Department next week.”

“Wait, just like that?”

Natasha shrugged. “I think not, but it seems like Fury has it in hand.”

“You think he’ll pull through?”

“I think he will.”

\--

Natasha walked in their front door, sat on the futon beside Clint, and dropped her head between her knees. Clint’s hand immediately went to her back, rubbing soothing lines down her spine. “What happened?” he asked gently. She was in her fight club clothes, though he couldn’t see any particularly grievous injuries.

“I asked him out,” she said between shaky breaths.

Phil had related the conversation they’d had regarding Bucky, and though Clint had a hard time believing they hadn’t been doing... something, he was willing to admit that trauma could have long-lasting and unusual side-effects. “Yeah?” he asked, trying to remain neutral. She continued to breathe, the tension bleeding out of her back slowly. “And?” he asked finally.

“He said yes.”

Clint grinned wide. Not that he’d expected anything different, but she had him worried with the head-between-her-knees act. “That’s great.”

“Now I have to go on a date,” she added, the edge of panic in her voice. “I have to... wear cute clothes and laugh at his jokes and eat at a restaurant.”

“I mean, aside from the cute clothes thing you already do all that. Dates are fun.” She glared at him as though he had said exactly the wrong thing. “It’s gonna be great. What are you guys doing?”

“Lunch and a movie,” she said almost petulantly. Natasha didn’t like to admit how much she loved films, but her fascination with cinema revealed a voyeuristic streak a mile wide.

“He’s sticking with the classics,” Clint nodded in approval. Natasha wilted into the couch a bit more. She could face the 7:30 AM coffee rush with aplomb, but a man who obviously worshiped her was too much. Clint understood the feeling.

\--

“I got you a thing.”

Natasha looked at Clint with a raised eyebrow. “A thing?”

“I know you were... with the cute clothes... I saw it and thought...” He held out a bag. She took it as though it might be a live bomb or a sack of piranhas.

She pulled the wad of fabric out and shook it experimentally. A long swag of scarlet cloth on the dark side of blood red unfurled. The fabric had a slight sheen to it that made it look soft and glamorous at the same time. She found the top of the dress and shook it again. It wasn’t anything fancy or over-the-top, but it matched her hair and complimented her pale skin.

“Say something so I know I didn’t make a dick of myself,” Clint said.

“Let me try it on.” She stripped off her shirt and pants and wriggled into it. Clint did an internal dance of victory that it _fit_. The halter top of the dress accentuated her generous bust and trim waist. The movement of the fabric kept the dress from being too formal. Natasha looked stunning and fresh and just a little vulnerable.

“You’re beautiful,” Clint breathed.

Natasha stared at her reflection with hunger and confusion as though she wanted to crawl through the mirror and ask her double how she pulled off her effortless good looks.

Getting them both out the door was a trial. Natasha kept coming up with one more thing she had to do and Clint was impatient to the point of ridiculousness. They made it to the subway platform without killing each other by some miracle alone. Natasha was taking the train out to Brooklyn to meet with Bucky while Clint was changing trains to meet Phil in Central Park. Clint kissed Natasha’s hair and jumped off the train, narrowly avoiding the closing doors. Her eyes followed him as the train began moving.

When Clint emerged from the subway, the day was just warming to the sticky feeling that characterized where spring bled into summer. He walked briskly through the few blocks of apartments and swanky museums and cultural centers to the steps of the Met. Phil was sitting on the steps waiting for him, an actual picnic basket sitting beside him with a blanket rolled and secured on top.

Phil seemed to sense his approach and put away his phone, stood and reached out. Clint stood on the step below Phil and looked up into his face, clasping their hands together. “Hey sexy,” he greeted Phil boldly, and rose on his toes for a kiss. Phil obliged him chastely, mindful of the crowds of school children and tour groups which swarmed up and down the stairs.

They broke the kiss and turned together towards the park. Phil picked up the picnic basket and they set off at a leisurely stroll. They went by the Turtle Pond and Belvedere Castle, crowds of fawning couples and excited children poking their heads over the crenulations. As they swung north, Clint took the picnic basket from Phil and laced their fingers together. It felt bold, but Phil squeezed his hand in a reassuring gesture that made it seem normal. They wandered through soccer fields and past a playground until they got to one of the areas of the park where sheets of rock surfaced from beneath the soil. Phil guided them off a path into a grassy field dotted with rocks and others seeking out a pleasant spot of nature on a beautiful day.

Clint shook out the blanket and Phil knelt to unpack the basket. He pulled out two monstrous sandwiches and a soaked-through bag of pickles. Clint’s stomach gave an approving rumble. Coleslaw, apples, and celery sodas followed. “I’m going to owe you so many dinners if you keep doing this,” Clint said.

“There are other ways you could pay me back,” Phil replied, completely straight-faced.

“That would make me a common street harlot,” Clint countered.

Phil leaned forward so his lips almost brushed Clint’s ear as he spoke. “You would never be common.” Clint shuddered. Okay, so that was what Coulson Foreplay looked like.

“Well, for enough pastrami, you could have me at your beck and call.”

Phil’s eyebrows went up. “So seasoned brisket is all it takes to get you to roll over and beg?”

Clint’s eyes darkened. “For you, I wouldn’t even require the brisket.” It came out much more sincerely than he had intended, which was patently ridiculous. A flash of burgundy and mustard out of the corner of his eye caused Clint to startle and stare, breaking the mood.

“What is it?” Phil asked, twisting to see what had drawn Clint’s attention.

Clint shook his head. “Nothing. It was just a jogger.” Phil raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “The guys who shook down Barton Brothers all wore matching tracksuits in this fugly brown/gold combo. There was just someone who...” Clint shrugged. “I guess more than evil mafia guys have terrible fashion sense in New York.” Phil scanned the joggers but didn’t see anybody who matched Clint’s description.

Clint sprawled on the blanket trying not to appear unsettled and Phil sat next to him. They ate sandwiches and discussed the merits of half-sour pickles versus kosher dills. Clint sliced the apples into pieces and got sticky with the juice. He licked his fingers clean in a semi-erotic display. Clint decided he didn’t particularly like celery soda. The pace of their conversation slowed gradually as they both lay back, sated and drowsy in the afternoon sunlight. Clint rolled to his side so he could see Phil. Tentatively, he reached out a hand and placed it on the other man’s chest, sliding into the shirt where a button had popped open. His hand rested over Phil’s heart, skin on skin, and he could feel the faint patta-pat of Phil’s heartbeat through his fingertips when he pressed. He could also feel soft skin and a few wispy curls of chest hair. 

Clint glanced at Phil’s face looking for a sign that the other man was uncomfortable. “Is this okay?” Clint pushed his fingertips along Phil’s pectoral, rising to the join of his shoulder and coasting along his collarbone.

“Mm-hmm,” Phil murmured in permission. Clint popped another button open and the shirt was open from collar to sternum. He traced up the tendon of Phil’s neck and down to the hollow of his collarbones. He teased a curl of chest hair over his sternum and raised his hand to trace up the opposite side of his neck.

“Unless you want me to get booked for public indecency it might be a good idea to save this sort of thing for later,” Phil said in an undertone.

“You know me; I love the bad boys.” In spite of his statement, Clint coasted his palm so it rested once more over Phil’s heart, rested his arm down Phil’s stomach, and dropped his head on Phil’s shoulder, effectively capturing him for use as a body pillow. They dozed like that until the contact grew too warm. Matching sweaty patches had formed down each of their sides when they finally broke apart.

“Do you want to walk more of the park, or...” Phil asked, trailing off.

“I have a better idea. You up for a walk?”

Phil shrugged. “Sure.” There were little backpack straps on the basket. Clint put it on even though he was sure he looked ridiculous, and they walked down Fifth Avenue for twenty blocks before shifting to Madison. Clint talked a bit about the good parts of the circus. Phil talked a bit about the bad parts of being an inspector for factory slaughter floors. “In the trenches,” he had called it, and after a few stories Clint began to understand why he equated the experience with being in war. Clint cut east and they stopped at the river. “Is this where we were going?” Phil asked as they ground to a halt at a pier overlooking the river.

“Almost,” Clint replied enigmatically. A few people showed up and then a few more, clumping together as though expecting something. The East River Ferry came charging up to the dock, swinging around and docking with practiced ease. “Come on.” Clint took Phil’s hand and dragged him with the moving swarm of people. Families and bikers, businessmen and women and a few tourists crowded aboard exchanging tickets or dollars for entry. Clint paid for both of them before Phil could reach for his wallet. “Come on,” Clint urged again, pulling Phil towards the gangway.

Clint crowded as far towards the bow as he could and sat on a chest apparently full of life jackets. He scooted back and splayed his legs, patting the space between his thighs and looking expectantly at Phil. Phil sat in the space and leaned backwards into Clint as the ferry began to move. The breeze over the water was fresh, and the afternoon sunlight painted the buildings of Midtown in slashes of gold and bright liquid silver. The ferry boat swayed as it charged across the river to the opposite shore. The ferry docked, crew scrambling off and wrangling passengers climbing aboard. Clint seemed fascinated by the process and leaned forward, hooking his chin over Phil’s shoulder to see better. Clint covered Phil’s ears just before the sharp blast of the horn sounded their departure, and Phil leaned into the contact.

Phil was warm and solid between his thighs, and he leaned back into Clint’s arms when they curled around his stomach. The picnic basket dug into his shoulders a bit uncomfortably when he executed that particular motion but he didn’t much care. He had Phil, and things were going well. They docked again, and a third time at the opposite side of the river. “I used to do this a lot when I first moved here,” Clint admitted. “This is the best part,” he said, looking up at the Brooklyn Bridge as they neared it to pass under. Phil’s line of sight followed his own and they let out a breath as they passed by the massive pylons to dock just under the miracle of modern engineering. Phil let out a sigh of pleasure.

A flicker of burgundy and gold had Clint tensing a moment later. This time he wasn’t imagining it. A muscled man in a fugly tracksuit was making his way quickly up the hill, having just disembarked the ferry. He was talking on a cell phone. “Is that—” Phil asked.

“Yeah. I don’t like this,” Clint admitted.

“Should we follow him?” Phil asked.

“Too late.” The sharp blasts of the boat horn announced their departure from dock. “We should get off at the next stop though, unless we’re going to Jersey.”

“Jersey gets too much flack,” Phil commented, trying to lighten the mood. Clint wasn’t going to relax. They stood and made their way to below decks. Manhattan was breathtaking in the slanting sunlight; fire bathed the windows and steel bones of the buildings and the water reflected lapis blue against the windows the sun no longer reached. Clint was tense in a way he hadn’t been in weeks.

As they stepped off the ferry, Clint knew they were in trouble. They tried to blend in with the flow of people exiting, sticking close to a clump of people in business clothes, but it was a lost cause.

“Bro!” a large man with a shaved head and facial hair too bushy to truly be called a goatee. “Bro, stop bro,” he added for good measure. He was accompanied by two other men, both smaller than the bruiser but by no means diminutive. His voice had the cadence of Eastern Europe or Russia, and his face said he was accustomed to getting what he asked for or fighting until he got what he wanted.

“Go without me,” Clint hissed to Phil, pushing him along to walk with the business crowd. Phil stumbled a few steps with the strangers, and when the tracksuits made no move to stop him, continued walking until he was out of their line of sight behind a ticket booth. “Is there a problem?” Clint asked, hands away from his body in a non-threatening posture.

“Bro, no problem,” the bruiser told him. “We just need to borrow you for a bit, bro.”

Clint glanced around looking for Phil. He was gone. _Thank god_ , Clint thought, but a tiny part of him cried in a lonely sort of fear. If he was getting out of this it would be by his own steam. “Borrow me? I’m not a library book. _Bro_.” Clint backed away, trying to get around them or at least put some of the flagpoles decorating the dock between him and them. They fanned out to contain him.

“Nothing against you, bro. Your brother though, he hid some stuff from us. He owes us. Bro’s not cooperating.”

“Barney?” Clint asked. “I haven’t seen Barney in almost a year.”

The littler tracksuits were at his 180 as the bruiser approached from the front. The river and now-empty pier blocked him in back. Worst case he could jump in the river, but that was at best an unappealing proposition. The bruiser shrugged. “Bro, I don’t give the orders. You don’t need to know anything; your brother will come when he knows we got you. Bro will smarten up and give the boss what he wants.”

“I think you greatly overestimate the strength of our fraternal bond,” Clint said. The bruiser shrugged again, a ripple of trapezius muscle that made it look as though he lacked a neck. Clint backed up further, drawing them away from where Phil had fled and keeping the smaller tracksuits from getting behind him. It was a losing maneuver.

“Look, how about I give Barney a call and see if he can do what you’re asking. No charge, no problem? I mean, you don’t want to go to the trouble of bringing me in if I coulda just called him and gotten this sorted, do you?”

“I don’t care about trouble, bro. Boss wants you in.” Bruiser ticked his head towards Clint in a signal to the tracksuits flanking him on either side. Clint felt more than saw them rush him. His peripheral vision told him the one on his right was coming in a bit faster than the guy on his left, so he moved that way, closing with the tracksuit and driving his knee towards the guy’s groin. The tracksuit managed to avoid the knee by tripping over an eyebolt set into the dock and crashing into Clint. They went down, Clint turning them as they fell so the tracksuit ended up under him. Hands pulled Clint off of the winded tracksuit roughly and spun him, preparing to punch him in the face. Clint continued the spin, whirling the picnic basket off one shoulder and finishing the revolution so the edge of the basket slammed into tracksuit two’s face. He saw the bruiser approaching to sort things out as he spun, so he didn’t wait to see how much damage the basket had done.

Clint slammed his left elbow across tracksuit two’s cheekbone again, catching his nose in the motion. Tracksuit two yelped in pain. Clint dropped the remainder of the picnic basket and ducked under a handrail just as the bruiser approached. Tracksuit one had recovered himself and was moving to flank again. The bruiser hopped the handrail in a show of agility which Clint wouldn’t have expected from his large size. Clint thought about reaching for the knife in his thigh pocket, but that would just escalate things and these guys probably had more experience with knife-fighting than Clint. The idea of killing one of them, even with the possibility that they would kill him, sickened Clint’s stomach.

He was out of space and time. The edge of the dock blocked him in on one side. The bruiser represented an impassable obstacle on one side. Tracksuit one was his only chance to escape. Clint lowered his head and charged, leading with his shoulder. They were matched for weight and height, and slamming into the tracksuit was like running headlong into a side of beef. The tracksuit was expecting it and absorbed some of the force, spinning Clint to keep from getting bowled over and simultaneously foiling his escape plans.

_At least Phil isn’t going to get the tar beaten out of him and kidnapped_ , Clint thought as he rolled with the tracksuit, scraping his forearms on the rough wood of the pier. He grappled, managing to get tracksuit two into a headlock, but he sensed the bruiser approaching too quickly for him to manage a true choke-out.

There was shouting. Clint recognized that some of it was his own growl of pain, anger and fear, but there were other voices. Hands grabbed ahold of his shirt and hauled back. Clint swung wildly with his elbow, stepping back and down on someone’s instep at the same moment. There was a howl of pain and outrage, and Clint felt a red-hot stab of pain across his side. Had someone pulled a knife? Clint stumbled backwards into another body and jesus, where had these guys come from? Were they getting backup?

“CLINT.” His name, shouted, almost directly into his face brought him to a standstill. “Clint, STAND DOWN.” Clint wobbled and fell to the side. The arms around him loosened so he collapsed in a crumpled heap. He was breathing so hard he was almost sobbing. Two cops were on top of the bruiser, cuffing him. Phil was crouched in front of him repeating his name with an insistence that indicated he had done so multiple times already.

“Phil.” It came out as a sob. He didn’t know what the fuck his emotions were doing but between the adrenaline and the stunning, shocking relief of Phil _coming back_ his head swam. Abruptly he leaned over and puked, a disgusting mish mash of their lunch.

There was still shouting, but it didn’t matter so much any longer. Another few cops appeared, and then a squad car.

“Bro, you in trouble, bro!” bruiser shouted to him. “The boss ain’t gonna stand for this bro, no way.” Tracksuit two was cuffed on his belly. Tracksuit one was sitting and cuffed. Clint spit, the taste of bile burning his tongue.

A cop approached him. “We’re going to have to take you in,” she told him almost apologetically. She nodded towards the first police officer who had pulled him off of tracksuit one and suffered from Clint’s terror-induced strength. The cop was nursing a bloody nose and a limp.

“Can he get his injuries looked at at the station?” Phil asked, suddenly at his side.

She nodded. “We can do this in front, if you prefer.” She held up cuffs.

\--

Clint wanted to say that he had never been so humiliated in his life, but with the life he had lived he could identify a number of events more mortifying than getting booked for assaulting a police officer on his third date with an amazing guy who he was really into.

Okay, booked was an overstatement. The cop who Clint had clocked was really understanding about the whole thing. Phil rode with Clint in the back of the squad car and to the precinct, and insisted that someone see to Clint’s abrasions and make sure he didn’t have a concussion before the detective talked to him. It took Clint and Phil three hours to talk to everyone, make statements, sign statements, and fill out the requisite paperwork to be released. 

“Where do you want to go?” Phil asked. Clint had bandages down both forearms, his knuckles were bruised from a punch he didn’t remember throwing, and his shoulder ached where he’d pretended to be a linebacker with neither the skill nor the muscle mass to back it up.

“I want to go home,” he groaned. “I can get there. You don’t have to—”

“I want to know you’ll get there safely. I’m coming with,” Phil said firmly. 

“Okay,” Clint responded, all the fight gone out of him. Phil took his arm to make sure he could walk steadily, and they made their way to the subway.

\--

Clint fumbled the key twice before Phil took it from him and opened the front door. Phil escorted him in with a hand on his lower back. Clint hadn’t so much perked up as he had built up some inertia and was now disinclined to stop moving. He was halfway to the futon before he registered that it was occupied. 

Natasha sat with a pillow clutched over her chest and her legs crossed in a way that made it ambiguous as to whether she was wearing panties. Bucky was sprawled, caught in an attempt to sit upright. He was wearing a pair of slacks, the fly undone, with a very obvious erection.

“Uh...” Bucky hedged.

“We weren’t expecting you back so early,” Natasha added primly.

Clint frowned. “What time is it?”

“Fuck, Barton, what the hell happened to you?” Bucky asked standing and zipping his fly with a wince.

Natasha frowned at him, dropping the pillow and going to support him as he sat on the futon. Phil stared pointedly at the wall. “Can I have, like, a dozen aspirin?” Clint asked.

“I’ll get that for you,” Phil offered.

By the time he got back with the pills, Natasha was wearing an over-large t-shirt and Clint had slumped over on her lap.

“I ruined your date, I’m sorry,” he was murmuring. Bucky put a blanket over him in spite of the reasonably warm apartment.

“Shh, it’s fine,” Natasha soothed, running her fingers through his hair.

“And I ruined our date,” Clint added, looking to Phil.

“No, that wasn’t your fault.”

“I thought you’d got away, and then you came back,” Clint replied a bit stupidly. Bucky rose and patted Clint on the head.

“I think our boy here’s got a touch of shock,” he said, going to rummage in the fridge. He came out with juice and forced Clint to drink.

Clint related the story in bits and pieces. Natasha and Bucky listened intently, eyes meeting at various points in a silent conference. They seemed particularly interested in descriptions of

the tracksuit mafia members, a fact which Phil didn’t miss.

“We should check you over for anything the medics at the station missed,” Natasha told him when he had finished. The medic had missed some scrapes on his knees and a welt across his side where the police had gotten him with a baton while trying to separate the fight, but he was well patched up otherwise.

Bucky patted Clint on the shoulder. “You’re gonna be fine. Get some rest.”

Phil kissed Clint on the forehead and moved to head home. Natasha was standing in shadow by the doorway. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

Phil frowned. “Of course.”

“He was in trouble and you didn’t run.”

“I wouldn’t,” Phil replied earnestly.

She stared quietly at him for a moment. “I’m beginning to believe that.”  
\--


	8. Chapter 8

Clint woke the next morning much less shocky but much more nervous. He hurt everywhere, especially in the head-shoulders-middle area. Which basically encompassed his body. Bucky had slept over on the futon for some unknown reason; he was probably trying to protect Clint or something.

Natasha and Bucky were in the kitchenette when he awoke, talking quietly but forcefully. They looked up when Clint tried to roll out of bed and ended up groaning and clutching his ribs instead. Police batons were no trifling matter. Bucky gave him a hand up and sat him down at the breakfast bar. He pulled a plate out of their oven and set it in front of Clint. “Eat, then we’ll talk,” he ordered. Clint ate.

Natasha’s cell rang and she went in the bathroom to take the call. Clint felt entirely more human after the meal, though that only seemed to fortify his mind for running terrified laps. Bucky set a cup of coffee in front of him.

“So... apparently the tracksuits are still...” Clint sighed, bumping his upper lip against the rim of the coffee mug. “I’m so thoroughly fucked.”

Bucky shrugged. “That remains to be seen.”

“They found me in _New York_. If there’s one place where you’re supposed to be able to disappear into the crowds it’s _New York_. They followed me and my boyfriend on a date. They almost kidnapped me. They almost...” Clint had honestly been more scared for Phil. He had seen Phil handle himself in a mocked up fight, but the art of two gentlemen engaging in fisticuffs and the fact of very dangerous men trying to beat him senseless and use him as bait in an attempt to draw out his errant sibling were two different beasts. Clint had fought with desperation which he was unsure Phil had ever felt. “I have to leave the state,” he concluded.

Bucky rolled his eyes.

Natasha sat down beside him. “You’re not going anywhere. We’re just going to have to keep a close eye on you for a bit.”

“I’m not a dog that might run off and forget where home is,” Clint grumbled.

“No. You’re an adult wanted by some shady elements in the area. Until we get this sorted out we’ll need to keep a closer eye on you,” Natasha replied matter of factly.

“We?” Clint asked, glancing between her and Bucky.

“Carol’s Corps,” Natasha replied. That was the unofficial name that the fight club had adopted, Carol being the den-mother and ringleader of the organization. “We’ll work out a rota. You’re not going anywhere without one of them present. Kidnappers are less likely to strike with a witness, especially one who looks like they could handle themselves in a fight.”

“I can’t ask you guys to do that.”

“You didn’t ask. They volunteered.” Natasha raised her phone and jiggled it indicating that was the call she had just taken.

“You guys can’t follow me around forever. Besides, isn’t this a job for the police or something?”

Bucky snorted. Natasha gave him a look that said, ‘quiet you’. “Not forever. Just until this gets sorted out.”

“And how exactly is it going to be sorted out, Tash? I don’t want you guys going and doing something stupid and getting killed over me. And for all you know, whatever you do will just make it worse. It might make them think I have what they want, or something.”

Bucky glanced at Natasha clearly asking if she wanted to field this question or if he should take it. Natasha sighed. “Those type of men aren’t as hard to deal with as they would like to believe,” she said scornfully. “I got myself out. I can fix this for you.”

“But that’s it; I don’t want you to fix this for me. This shouldn’t be a problem. This isn’t something normal people have to deal with - the fucking Mafia for god’s sake. If fucking Barney—”

“Your problems _are_ our problems, partner,” Bucky said, clapping him on the shoulder. “That’s what she was saying.”

“No, they’re my own fucked up—”

It wasn’t quite a slap, but it was close. Natasha kept her hand on his cheek, but moved her thumb to the other side of his chin so she could force his face towards her. “We will deal with this like a goddamned family, so shut your mouth and suck it up and accept that you’re getting a protection detail.”

\--

Clint got used to always being with someone for the week after that. Steve showed up to accompany him on what were normally solo runs. Bucky slept over at their place frequently, and for three people, two of whom were dating and got at least to second-base on their first date, it was remarkably not awkward. Rhodey and Carol showed up occasionally for shifts of Clint-watching, and Happy always seemed to be available when nobody else was free. It was a weird way to live, but he got surprisingly used to it, and even fond of the company, after just a few days.

Whether from the protection detail or because they were biding their time, Clint didn’t catch a whiff of burgundy and mustard. Natasha and Bucky would disappear Carol Corps nights, but Tony accidentally tattled on them and told Clint they hadn’t been showing up. He wondered where they got off to, but they always shook their heads when he asked. Part of him hated that they treated him like a child, but the more reasonable, objective side observed the way they talked in their own secret language. A deep part of him knew they were equipped to deal with this in a way he was not.

“What exactly are you guys doing?” Clint asked one morning during the lull between ultra-early commuters and very-early commuters.

Natasha shrugged. “We’re looking for a way to convince the boss that it’s in his best interest to drop you.”

“How?”

The fine muscles around her eyes tightened. “You make him realize you’re not worth it.”

\--

By the time that Natasha was satisfied by her information, it was coming down to the wire. The inspection with Coulson was coming due in just a few days, and Clint was chafing under his careful guard to such a degree that Natasha knew he would do something stupid within the week. She and Bucky kitted up and headed out.

The stronghold of the tracksuit mafia was actually in the suburbs, in a Ukrainian neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn. 

Bucky wore a leather jacket, the left arm pinned up, in spite of the heat. Natasha wore a canvas jacket and heavy pants. They had discussed the likelihood of knives versus guns, and dressed accordingly. Tracksuits were arrayed out in front of the club like a pack of dogs.

One of them whistled at Natasha. She looked at their leader - the bruiser whom Clint had described, if she had to guess. “I need to talk to the boss,” she told him with just a hint of her Russian accent.

The bruiser glanced at Bucky and then at Natasha. She tossed her hair. “Bro,” the bruiser said, and one of the tracksuits moved forward to frisk Natasha. He leered, running his palms over her breasts. She very calmly kneed him in the groin hard enough to fell him in a single strike.

The other tracksuits bristled, preparing for a fight. She stopped them with a glance. “Bro,” she enunciated clearly, “take me to the boss.”

Bruiser sneered but gestured for them to follow him. Bucky followed half a step behind her.

They went through a seedy strip club, mostly empty at that hour. The back room had unironic velvet wallpaper and a smell somewhere between a locker room and and ER clinic that put both their hackles up. Bruiser knocked on the door. “Boss. Visitors.”

He opened the door before getting a response and loomed as they entered. A shriveled man with blue eyes like glass shards and an oxygen mask over his face sat behind a cluttered desk. His mouth was set in a perpetual frown, and he was attended by one of the dancers. The ER smell was stronger in the office.

“What do you want?” he hissed, scornful and angry. “I don’t know you,” he added for good measure.

Bruiser looked doubtfully at Bucky and Natasha as though he was considering throwing them out on their ears right then in spite of what they’d said earlier. “I’m here about a business transaction,” Natasha told him calmly.

“I don’t do business with whores and cripples,” the boss wheezed.

“Hey buddy, you’re one to talk,” Bucky retorted at the same time that Natasha took two steps forward, transforming from a normal woman to a hunting beast.

“You tried to take something of mine,” she said dangerously low. The boss stared at her, reptilian and incredulous. “Clint Barton is mine. If you touch him again you will lose your hands.”

Bucky slipped his hand into his pocket. The boss wheezed a cackle. “The Bartons are mine; bought and paid for.”

“Little Clint never signed onto that bargain,” Bucky countered, lightly scornful. “He’s not going to get held to it.”

“What do you want?” The boss asked it in a way that indicated he wanted the conversation to be over enough to give in to some minor point.

“Just what I said. You leave Clint Barton alone. He never sees you. He never hears from you. He so much as smells your polyester snap-off pants and the deal is off.”

“And what are you offering?” he asked.

“Barney’s current location. He hasn’t moved in over a month. It seems likely that you’ll be able to catch up with him easily enough.”

The boss’ cold eyes flicked between Natasha and Bucky, and then to the bruiser. There was a split second where nothing happened, and then Bucky’s fist came out of his pocket equipped with a set of brass knuckles and he coldcocked the bruiser with a haymaker, just as the bruiser had started moving towards Natasha. The dancer screamed. Bucky put his boot on the bruiser’s windpipe, ready to step down if he started struggling. Natasha had a switchblade out and vaulted over the desk in the same instant. She stood over the boss, the switchblade twined in the tubing of his oxygen mask, a chinadoll blank face on. “You will take my deal,” she told him.

“Fuck you, whore,” he spit out.

“You notice some of your crew gone missing lately?” Bucky asked in a conversational tone.

“That is Ivan’s doing,” he said. “The Black Widow—”

“I don’t work for Petrovitch any longer,” she told him, a subtle note of threat in her voice.

The man wheezed a few breaths. “I’ll take your deal.”  
\--


	9. Epilogue

The day had come. It was that time when they would do or die; pass and validate all of Phil’s hard work and all of their effort, or fail and be shut down for good. Clint and Natasha arrived at the bay by six to go over everything one last time. Natasha had a checklist out and was running through it verbally for Clint. Finally they had to accept that everything was as it should be. They took out the trash one last time and sat in a melange of quiet anxiety.

Three knocks rang against their front door like muffled thunder. “Health Department,” a familiar deep growl called. Natasha answered the door; Fury was there in a dark raincoat, just as imposing as before. Maria was shadowing him and spared a wry smirk for Natasha as she walked in. “I heard you damn fools were about ready to come to heel. About time.”

Phil had warned them that Fury might try to antagonize them, and to just keep their mouths shut. Fury pulled a pad out of his raincoat pocket and glared around the space, and then at Natasha and Clint individually. “Well? Show me where you keep your certifications and get the hell out. I’m not doing this while you gawp.”

Natasha and Clint vacated the building. They leaned against the brick exterior and stared into the morning light. It was a grey, wet sort of day, and they were sticky with the not-quite-rain within minutes. Natasha pulled a flask out of her thigh pocket, took a pull, and handed it to Clint.

Fury was in there for nearly an hour. When he was done, Maria poked her head out and invited them in. Clint felt dizzy with nerves and Natasha’s booze. Fury was poring over their paperwork, eye bright and focused.

“You two...” Fury shook his head. “I told Phil this would come to nothing, but damned if you two didn’t pull it out for him.”

“We couldn’t have done it without him,” Clint said, adding, “Sir,” at Fury’s sharp glare.

Fury nodded again. “You’ll get a copy of my report in ten business days. Keep up the good work, people.” Fury stood from their work table, taking a sheaf of papers with him.

Natasha shot Clint a ‘you ask him’ look. Clint shot it back. They remained silent as Fury moved to leave. Maria saved them from an agony of anxiety with a small, reassuring smirk and a nod.

“That means we passed, right?” Clint asked as soon as they had left. “That’s what that meant?”

Natasha rolled her eyes at Clint.

\--

Phil delivered their small blue ‘A’ personally a few days later.

\--

“It’s a sign of how forward-thinking and visionary I am, that I backed these guys almost a year ago,” Tony said, gesturing at Clint and Natasha with a plastic champagne flute. Steve gave him a pointed glare. “It’s really paid off. The best cup in the borough, delivered to those in need, and now without rats or anything. To the caffeinating vigilantes of Midtown and the most delicious thing I’ve ever put my chips down on.” Tony raised his flute and drained it. Those assembled followed suit. Clint sloshed a generous splash over Faizeh’s nose. “Would you stop doing that?!” Tony cried, “the bubbles aren’t good for her coating!” Steve rushed over with a rag to mop the sparkling wine off the surface.

Faizeh was decked out for the occasion with explosive moving text declaring “Coffee Bandits: Now Entirely Legal!” “We Passed!” and “No Longer Under Investigation By The Health Department!” The display required the truck be hooked into the power grid, but the looks on everyone’s faces was worth it.

The party took up most of a block in Alphabet City and consisted of two lots which Tony owned, three community gardens who had opened their gates for the party, and a wine bar which Tony had paid to open its doors to the revelers. Faizeh had a position of honor in the larger parking lot, wheel rims gleaming and windshield spotless. Huge crocks of cold-brew coffee were set up in place of kegs, and a huge metal trough was filled with ice and bottles of cheap sparkling wine.

Natasha had baked thousands of pastries which were rapidly being consumed by the enthusiastic partygoers. Natasha herself was tucked into Bucky’s embrace under a canopy of wisteria on a bench seat in one of the gardens. He said something that made her smile and look down. Clint was warming up to the guy.

Tony was in rare form, goatee trimmed to precision angles and sunglasses tipped down his nose. He circled the party, joining conversations, shaking hands, and schmoozing. Tony stopped where Steve was talking with Carol Danvers and scooched in close. Steve’s arm went around Tony’s shoulders in what could be mistaken for a friendly gesture. Tony’s arm snaked around Steve’s hips, pulling him closer by the hip bone and then moving down and around to cup his ass. Steve turned pink but continued his conversation without breaking. Apparently they had worked out whatever had been going on between them. Clint smirked.

He jumped when he felt a pinch on his own butt. When he whirled around, Phil was giving him his blankest ‘nothing to see here’ look. He broke at Clint’s best puppy-dog eyes and wrapped Clint in his arms from behind. Clint swayed them to the beat of the music on the PA system.

“It’s kinda like a crazy Shakespearean comedy,” Phil commented in a wondering tone, watching the flux and flow of people through the block party.

“Everyone hooks up at the end, right?” Clint agreed with a chuckle.

“I wouldn’t quote me on this, but I swear I saw the Colonels giving each other the _look_.”

“Are you serious?” Clint asked gleefully. Phil nodded, swaying rhythmically. “They would make the most badass babies on the face of the planet,” Clint said with awe. “They would like, be practicing Jujitsu in the cradle.”

“Carol would have them in flight training before they could drive,” Phil agreed.

“Rhodes would have tiny Glocks specially made so he could teach them to shoot.”

Clint and Phil continued ever more improbable speculation as to what the offspring of Colonels Danvers and Rhodes would be capable. They left it off by the time actual super-powers began to be discussed.

Banner shuffled by, a cup of coffee and a tall, beautiful brunette on his arm. “Bruce - who’s the lady?” Clint asked.

Banner turned as though he hadn’t noticed Clint and Phil at all. “Oh, this is— she’s my— Betty. Betty Ross.” The look Banner favored her with was pure disbelieving adoration, like he asked himself how he was so lucky every time he saw her.

“She’s your Betty?” Clint asked with a mock scepticism.

“Doctor Ross, pleased to meet you.” She was ethereally beautiful and the essence of calm and grace. She shook hands with Clint and Phil. “And before you ask, no I’m not a Doctor of Physics, too. Just medicine.”

“We should get you to sew Natasha’s head back together next time then. I’m not sure Bruce the Bonesaw got all the important parts back in before he stitched her shut,” Clint joked.

“What?” Betty asked, glancing in alarm at Bruce. Bruce buried his nose in his coffee and hunched his shoulders.

“Oh fuck,” Clint said. “I shouldn’ta said anything. The booze, oh, it’s getting to my head. Take me to lie down, honey.” Clint faked a swoon back into Phil’s arms. Phil dragged him to a lawn chair and lay him down. Clint didn’t let up faking until he was certain Bruce and Betty had moved off. Phil was looking down at him with an expression of fond asperity. Clint reached towards Phil’s hand and pulled the other man on top of him. They both let out an ‘oof’ when Phil landed, but Clint didn’t mind getting a little squished. For once in his life, everything was coming up roses.

\--

Faizeh was gleaming, every surface freshly polished. The new letter was proudly displayed next to their menu in the service window. They’d spent a few hours the night before flushing the espresso machine and the Clover, and the beans were fresh enough Clint was moderately concerned the brewing group would fly off the espresso machine when he pulled his first shot. Natasha cut around a line of cabs, honking and swearing.

They screeched to a halt directly in front of the Licensing Bureau for the Health Department of New York. Clint tapped out a message and hit ‘send’ on the new app Tony had installed in JARVIS. A tweet, Facebook status update, wall post, and every other social media tie-in that Tony could come up with went out to everyone within a mile who had shown an interest in coffee. The line formed almost immediately and they started portioning out drinks.

“You know, if you’d told me a few months ago we’d be serving out front this place, I’d have called you crazy,” Clint commented to Natasha, layering foam for a macchiato.

Natasha snorted. “We all have to settle down sometime.”

“I guess,” Clint agreed doubtfully.

Natasha leaned into him, back to back as she minded the Clover. “Are you happy?” she asked.

Clint thought about Natasha, her roots set down entwined with his own. He thought about Phil. He thought about the cheery little space they’d carved out of the mess of Tony’s warehouse. “Yeah.” He said it quietly.

“That’s what matters,” Natasha told him, pushing to the service window and shouting at a customer who’d gotten distracted after placing their order.  
\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks go out to Blackestglass who was there from the first 10k, reading, commenting, encouraging, and helping me with my sometimes questionable relationship with English, and Pluvialmetropolis who came to the rescue towards the end to suss out all the little problems we had missed and give a fresh perspective. Comments and concrit are always appreciated. I hope you enjoyed!


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